The Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Marseille (AP-HM) was sentenced this Monday to 50,000 euros suspended fine for manslaughterafter the death of a patient suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, found dead in an abandoned wing of the Conception hospitalfifteen days after his disappearance from the hematology department.
The facts date back to August 19, 2019. That day, Jean Ligonnet, 72, was transported by taxi from the Var nursing home where he lived to a Marseille hospital to receive his treatment. He disappeared after waiting in the ward, sitting on a chair in front of the nursing room.
The searches initiated by the hospital and his family remained in vain until the discovery of his body on September 3, in a room located in the west wing of the sixth floor. It is abouta wing disused for five years and whose upstairs door was nevertheless well padlocked.
Due to the condition of the body, the victim was identified by a partially legible “Christine” tattoo on the shoulder.
No negligence on the part of the hospital but a lack of “reliable instructions”
The court, explained its president Laure Humeau, exonerated the AP-HM of negligence in welcoming this patient and of a failure to implement the existing protocol for vulnerable people.
The nursing home had in fact not alerted the hospital of episodes of running away or of his transfer, in May, to a closed unit. In the department where he came every week, the staff had not noticed any tendency to wander.
On the other hand, the judges consider that “the failure to secure the disused wing and the ineffectiveness of the research are indeed the determining causes of the death of Jean Ligonnet since it was his confinement in this place which caused it“.
The disused wing was in fact accessible from emergency staircases and the triggering of room alarms had given rise to a search that was far from exhaustive.
Two nights in a row, security agents passed near the retiree, who was found dead in a room without an exterior handle.
While the management of the AP-HM recognizes daily disappearances of patients, according to the court, it would be “necessary to implement permanent and reliable instructions to ensure, in the rare cases where the disappearance is not resolved within 24 or 48 hours, that the entire establishment is indeed the subject of searches“.
During the hearing, on July 8, the general director of the AP-HM François Crémieux, representing the legal entity, recognized that “there is no death more atrocious, locked in this gloomy and dirty place“.
He added that he “it is not possible to return to what happened but it is possible, with words, to express sympathy [de l’institution] towards those close to him“.
