A woman worked at a health-care facility as a medical assistant. A staffing firm hired and assigned
Question:
A woman worked at a health-care facility as a medical assistant. A staffing firm hired and assigned another woman to work at the same facility, also as a medical assistant. The two women did not get along. They had several arguments in the workplace, including disagreements over the way in which treatment rooms were being stocked and some missing lab sips. Several weeks after these arguments, the woman who worked for the facility took a drink from her own water bottle, immediately experienced burning on her tongue and in her throat, and vomited. After an investigation, the coworker confessed to having had poured carbolic acid into the woman’s water bottle, although her specific motive for doing so remained unclear. The carbolic acid was present in the facility to treat certain foot conditions and was accessible to the coworker, but was not a substance regularly used by either woman on the job. Is the staffing firm legally responsible for the attempted poisoning of a coworker by an employee it hired and assigned? Why or why not? Montague v. AMN Healthcare, 223 Cal.App.4th 1515 (4th App. Dist. 2014).
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