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Three more nurses sue Beth Israel for firing them after they refused to get Covid-19 shots
By adamg on Thu, 05/04/2023 - 2:28pm
Three nurses who say Beth Israel's parent company violated their religious right to refuse Covid-19 vaccines yesterday sued for at least $2 million apiece.
Although their complaint, filed in US District Court in Boston, cites religious beliefs, it does not list their specific religious issues with vaccination but instead rails at length that the vaccines don't actually protect anybody and argues that Beth Israel had a conflict of interest because some of the work done to develop the no-longer-used Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine was done at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
One of the nurses, Alita Mulvey, worked there, another, Gabriella Howard, at the former Lahey Clinic in Burlington and the third, Leanna Demarco, at Beverly Hospital.
The three say they continued to work at the height of the pandemic in 2020 relying on what they said was the hospital's alleged word that masks were enough protection in the days before vaccines were released and that the hospital should not have fired them - one in 2021, the other two in 2022.
The three allege their firings violated their rights to due process and that they were not treated equally with other employees "because their sincerely held religious beliefs were not accommodated."
In addition to the minimum $2 million apiece for "general damages and costs," the nurses are also seeking additional damages for "emotional distress, embarrassment, humiliation, anxiety, sleeplessness and emotional trauma," as well as attorneys' costs.
The three are represented by Richard Chambers of Lynnfield, who represents other Beth Israel worker who sued last fall over their firings.
He also represented a group of people who sued Boston over its since terminated vaccination requirement for access to indoor spaces, but who lost, as well as four North End restaurant owners who charge Mayor Wu hates white Italian men and that's why she imposed a fee on North End restaurants to have outdoor dining on sidewalks last year. A hearing on the city's motion to dismiss that case is currently set for June 16.
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 Complete complaint | 538.7 KB |
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Comments
These suits are pure word salad
...and anyone wanting to work in healthcare who privileges their superstitions over other people's safety is a bad person and should feel bad.
It's not a superstition to
It's not a superstition to believe that a previous COVID infection confers natural immunity. That's something we all observed empirically ourselves when we cought a cold or the flu, and then recovered from it. That's the exact opposite of superstition.
If anything is superstitious, it's blindly trusting the claims about how natural immunity wasn't "enough" as if anyone had any clue what counts as "enough".
One could argue it is
Who here is claiming that catching a cold means you won't catch another cold? You must be pretty young if you've never heard any jokes/whines about how we can send a man to the moon but we can't cure the common cold.
What can cause a cold? A coronavirus. What is Covid-19? A really bad coronavirus.
No one ever said that a
No one ever said that a previous infection conferred immunity, they said that it did not.
I am sure that religion had nothing to do with these people not wanting the vaccine. They just chose to believe stupid tumors instead of scientists. They have no business being nurses.
Any winners?
Have any of these suers won any of their cases here in MA? Any of them? How many of these wastes of the courts' time have to be rejected before judges start sanctioning the lawyers for filing them?
You were expecting rationality?
You were expecting rationality?
So, if I'm a Christian Scientist and get a job as
a healthcare worker, I should be able to do nothing and get paid because otherwise that's repressing my religious freedoms, right?
Or maybe if my religion prevents me from doing my job, I should find another line of work? Maybe I'll try the inane frivolous lawsuit approach first, though.
Maybe I'll try the inane
It's the American Way.
Free lotto tickets
These people don't care about anyone's health, C19, or vaccines. A slimy lawyer gave them a sweetheart deal: He'll represent them for free for a grievance he concocted.
If he win, he keeps a sizable chunk and they get the rest. If he looses, they are out nothing.
Which is why, if a plaintiff
in a civil lawsuit loses the case, they should be required to pay court and defendant’s legal costs.
We as a society also really need to rethink the concept of monetary damages that are not based on any justifiable costs the plaintiff may have incurred, and not because “we want to send a message.”
This again
Please do a search on the responses every other time you have posted this same thing.
I hate repeating myself
But yes, over and over. His proposal would make it even harder for the little guy to fight back when he's been wronged by a more powerful individual or organization because they could stand up as massive a legal challenge to you that you wouldn't have the resources to match, and then you would be forced to pay for it.
This MIGHT be an ok idea, IF
...we had governmental offices that were properly staffed and charged with oversight and enforcement of our laws and regulations, as opposed to our current system, which is almost entirely built around the idea that if you're wronged, that your remedy is to take up civil action in the courts and the subsequent fines will be sufficient penalty to prevent future wrongdoing from occurring.
The evidence argues you are right.
At least from my experience, civil law is against anyone who is not wealth. Instead it favors the business - or insurance company - that has the resources, including money - to wait out the individual.
The arbitration system is also designed to favor insurance companies and other corporations. Arbitrators are like any other person trying to make a buck. They want repeat business. They are incentivized to favor the insurance company or other business that may choose the arbitrator the next time the insurance company screws over another person they are supposed to protect.
Add that the state and federal governments both refuse to fund court systems beyond the bare bones.
The saying is that money doesn't buy happiness. But money can make avoiding unhappy events (e.g, layoffs, floods and fires, health crisis) easier to deal with. So money will keep unhappiness at bay better than a lack of money.
Money is supposed to not buy justice (unless you're on the Supreme Court). But the more money one can wield the more justice will favor the hand that feeds it.
Add, that as Donald Judas Trump taught us, you can screw over a thousand contractors. All you need do it to throw money at lawyers who just keep the wheels of justice turned toward your direction.
Why in God's name, pun
Why in God's name, pun intended, would a Christian Scientist work as a nurse in the first place?
Wouldn't "sincerely held religious beliefs?"
Dictate forgiveness, turning a cheek and not engaging in legal proceedings? Or is this yet another scenario of selective religiosity?
Why even work in the medical
Why even work in the medical field if you don’t believe in science?
Because it's a job
It's not a good reason, but it is a reason.
Nurses who don't believe in
Nurses who don't believe in vaccines. How does that work?