## Facts

- Edmund Gernannt, an elderly patient with Alzheimer’s-type dementia, was involuntarily committed to a county hospital and placed in a unit for Alzheimer’s and dementia patients due to agitation and assaultive behavior.
- Mary Berberian, a head nurse with extensive experience caring for Alzheimer’s patients, knew Gernannt’s diagnosis and history of agitation and prior staff-directed violence.
- Gernannt attempted to leave through a fire exit, triggering an alarm; Berberian tried to redirect him.
- During the encounter, Gernannt pushed Berberian, causing her to fall and fracture her right leg, requiring surgery and leaving ongoing limitations.
- Berberian sued Gernannt (through his guardian and later his estate) for negligence; her husband asserted a derivative loss-of-consortium claim.

## Issues

1. Whether a mentally incompetent patient who lacks capacity to control his conduct owes a duty of care to a paid professional caregiver for injuries incurred while providing care.
2. Whether the claim should be resolved by altering the negligence standard of care to account for the patient’s mental disability or by finding no duty as a matter of law.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of New Jersey affirmed judgment for the patient’s estate, but on different grounds than the lower courts.
- The Court held that mentally incompetent patients owe no duty of care to protect paid caregivers from injuries suffered while caring for those patients.
- The Court concluded the negligence claim should have been dismissed at the close of plaintiffs’ evidence based on lack of duty, rather than submitted to the jury under a modified standard of care.
- Claims against other defendants had been resolved separately and were not part of the appeal.

## Legal Principles

- Negligence may be barred at the duty stage when public policy and the nature of the parties’ relationship make it inappropriate to impose an obligation of reasonable care.
- Although the general rule applies an objective reasonable-person standard even to mentally disabled actors, that rule may not govern where the plaintiff is a paid professional hired to manage risks created by the defendant’s incapacity.
- A paid caregiver’s knowledge, training, and compensation for confronting incapacity-related behavioral risks support treating resulting injuries as occupational hazards, commonly addressed through workers’ compensation rather than patient liability.
- For injuries arising from conduct that is a product of a mentally incompetent patient’s disability, the patient owes no negligence duty to the paid caregiver providing care.

## Conclusion

The court held that a mentally incompetent Alzheimer’s patient has no tort duty to protect a paid professional caregiver from injuries caused by the patient’s incapacity-related conduct, affirming judgment for the estate and treating the matter as a no-duty determination rather than a modified standard-of-care question.


Berberian v. Lynn, 845 A.2d 122 (N.J. 2004)