A Black ICU nurse who claimed a Colorado hospital racially discriminated against her and then fired her for complaining, while wrongfully blaming her for an elderly patient’s death, was awarded $20 million by a federal jury last month.
DonQuenick Joppy, 41, sued HCA-HealthOne LLC, the parent company of The Medical Center of Aurora, in U.S. District Court in Colorado in April 2022, three years after she was fired in the wake of the death of a 93-year-old patient who was experiencing organ failure and septic shock when he was admitted to the intensive care unit, attached to a ventilator.
The unconscious man’s family soon agreed to turn off his ventilator, and Joppy was initially charged with palliative care — making his death as comfortable and painless as possible, according to the lawsuit, obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
Then she says she followed the instructions of a respiratory therapist delivered via phone to withdraw the patient from the ventilator, and stayed in the hospital room comforting the family as he passed away, showing no signs of distress.
While a medical examiner found the man died of natural causes, the hospital determined that Joppy had “acted outside the scope of her practice as a nurse and outside the standard of practice for ICU end-of-life care” by turning off his ventilator, possibly causing him to suffocate and suffer for 13 minutes. Protocol dictated that she wait for the respiratory therapist to turn off the ventilator, they said, and denied he had directed her to do so.
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Hospital officials fired Joppy in June 2019 and then reported her actions to the state health department, alleging criminal neglect.
The Colorado Attorney General’s Office filed charges of manslaughter and negligent death of an at-risk person, both felonies, against Joppy in November 2020, but dropped the case in September 2021 “in the interest of justice.”
Joppy alleged that the hospital knew the patient was unconscious, unresponsive, and “never had the drive to breathe” at any time he was in the ICU, and that she had not harmed him. She argued that officials at The Medical Center of Aurora (TMAC) purposely mischaracterized her role in his death as a pretext to terminate her in retaliation for complaints she had made earlier about mistreatment based on racial discrimination by hospital staff.
The hospital then maliciously tried to have her professional nursing license revoked and to end her career, the lawsuit claimed.
In her complaint, Joppy, who was hired in June 2017 to work as a registered nurse in the TMAC ICU, said that she was “subject to verbal and nonverbal slights and microaggressions designed to marginalize, segregate, and undermine her based on stereotypical and harmful views of Black professionals.”
Despite a favorable performance review in 2018 and positive reviews from patients, Joppy said the mostly non-Black management in the ICU treated her poorly, including charge nurses who would openly yell at her, criticize her, and undermine her in a humiliating and demeaning manner. This did not happen to non-Black nurses, she claimed.
Charge Nurse Lindsay Jordan was particularly abusive towards Joppy and would constantly criticize her work and scream at her, she said.
Other staff relied on negative stereotypes about Black employees’ abilities in making employment decisions, she argued, citing her experience with Charge Nurse Michael Oleszczuk, who she says denied her the opportunity to participate in a training for patients with heart problems offered to other nurses.
Oleszczuk dismissively explained that heart patients require “much deeper critical thinking and much better organizational skills” than she had, she alleged.
Oleszczuk continued to treat Joppy in a demeaning and demoralizing way, she claimed, and in early March 2019 told her that since she was good at cleaning, she should “clean his house and clip his dog’s toe nails.”
Joppy complained to her supervisor about Oleszczuk but got no response, the lawsuit said.
On another occasion, a white patient’s family accused Joppy of going into a patient’s purse, stealing a credit card and buying a stethoscope. Rather than conduct an investigation, the complaint said the hospital’s human resources department decided to restrict Joppy to working in only one section of the ICU, and did not allow her to go into the locker room or main break room with other employees. Then they thanked her for not making a “big fuss” over it, the complaint alleged.
Joppy also contended that she was tasked with caring for up to three critically ill patients at a time, with no backup, while other ICU nurses, who worked as a team, were asked to care for only two patients each.
Joppy complained to her supervisor that she didn’t feel safe with that workload, and also felt isolated and occupationally segregated, and thought she was being treated differently than her non-Black co-workers, the lawsuit said. Her supervisor “indicated he would take care of the situation, but nothing was ever done,” she claimed.
In March 2019, “in order to escape the abusive and discriminatory treatment” in the ICU, Joppy applied for a transfer to the RN Critical Care Float Pool, a position with higher pay.
The day she was scheduled for an interview, she learned that it had been cancelled because she now had a Performance Improvement Plan in place and was therefore ineligible for a transfer. Joppy said the PIP was shocking news to her, and she sought an explanation from her supervisors.
She learned a few days later that her 60-day improvement plan required her to “use proper body language and tone” and “remain respectful towards the charge nurses and other employees within the hospital.” The plan also called for her to acquire “no further patient or family complaints” (which Joppy called an unattainable goal) and reprimanded her for “listening to music and dancing on the night of March 18th.”
The improvement plan was retaliatory and primarily based on unsubstantiated accusations against Joppy from the charge nurses that she had previously complained about, the lawsuit alleged. It also reflected “racially biased, stereotypical and harmful views of Black professionals,” she contended.
“The PIP was a sham,” the lawsuit said, as it called for weekly progress meetings with hospital management that never occurred during the 60-day period, which ended around the time of the elderly patient’s death on May 24, 2019.
The investigation into Joppy’s actions during the patient’s end-of-life care was initiated by Jordan, “one of the nurses who previously showed open animosity and hatred” towards Joppy and who had previously treated her more harshly than non-Black nurses, the lawsuit claimed, noting that Joppy had previously reported to two supervisors that she felt harassed and bullied by Jordan.
The lawsuit accused HCA-HealthOne and five hospital staff members of racial discrimination and the health care system of retaliation and malicious prosecution in violation of federal civil rights law.
In its answer in January 2024, HCA-HealthOne denied that it or its nurses “undertook any malicious conduct, fostered a racially hostile work environment, or engaged in discriminatory and/or retaliatory practices” against Joppy.
The defendants said that Joppy was terminated “for her failure to follow policies and protocols designed to provide patients with dignity, safety, and comfort during end-of-life care, and for practicing outside the scope of her practice.”
They denied that the hospital or its employees “had any authority to or actually did take any steps designed to end Plaintiff’s nursing career, or to cause criminal charges to be brought against her. Rather, Defendants’ interactions with the state arose from the Hospital’s independent statutory obligation to report to the state any concerning patient-related situations, such as this patient’s end-of-life care.”
The defendants further asserted that they “were not aware that the Hospital’s statutorily-required report to the state would give rise to the AG exercising its independent prosecutorial discretion to file criminal charges against Plaintiff. Defendants did not, and do not, support the criminal prosecution of caregivers for mistakes made in the course of their care.”
The answer noted that Joppy “had all the technical requirements for her position” and “on many occasions Plaintiff performed her duties in a satisfactory manner and received positive feedback” but argued that she “also had notable performance deficiencies and received negative feedback from patients and co-workers … culminating in her actions and decisions on May 24, 2019,” which “caused TMCA to conclude she was not qualified for her position.”
Last October, U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney dismissed the lawsuit’s malicious prosecution claims, but allowed the discrimination and retaliation claims to proceed.
Joppy sought a jury trial to determine economic, compensatory and punitive damages to make up for lost wages and benefits, irreparable harm to her reputation and career, emotional distress, and mental anguish.
After a seven-day trial that concluded on Aug. 19, the jurors affirmed on their verdict form that Joppy had proven that the hospital terminated her in retaliation for her complaints about race discrimination, and awarded her $20 million — $5 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages. Judge Sweeney approved the verdict the next day.
“This verdict represents a measure of justice after years of discrimination, retaliation, and false accusations,” her attorney Jennifer Robinson said in an emailed statement to Atlanta Black Star. “While no legal outcome can erase what she endured, Ms. Joppy hopes that this result will encourage hospitals and healthcare systems to take the concerns of frontline nurses seriously and to ensure that all employees are treated with dignity and fairness and their workplaces are free from racial discrimination.”
In her statement, Joppy said, “For six long years, I fought to defend my integrity as a nurse,” noting that she received “partial vindication” when a state court judge dismissed manslaughter charges against her. “But the full truth could only be restored when the hospital was held accountable for the false accusations, racial discrimination, retaliation, and bullying I endured. This verdict is that final piece, and I hope it brings change so that no other nurse has to go through what I went through.”
“We strongly disagree with the outcome of this trial and will appeal,” a spokesperson for HCA-HealthOne said in an emailed statement to Atlanta Black Star. “Ms. Joppy chose to turn off the ventilator on a living patient, which was outside the scope of her nursing license and not the standard of care for end-of-life patients. As a result, the patient event was reported to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) as required by law.”
“Ms. Joppy’s employment was terminated because of the actions she took, and those actions alone,” the statement continued. “We have the utmost respect for our patients and their family’s end-of-life decisions, and we honor those decisions to ensure the care, comfort, safety and dignity of our patients. Our hospital will continue working hard to foster an environment that treats our colleagues and patients with dignity and respect.”
Robinson further said that Joppy is “focused on healing and moving forward. She was deeply traumatized by the hospital’s treatment and is working to recover from the lasting impact and the hospital’s continued refusal to accept responsibility for its egregious conduct in spite of the jury’s verdict.”
Joppy told the Denver Post that she has had unstable housing since the hospital fired her, and had to live separately from her 15-year-old daughter because she no longer had the income to provide for her.
“I’m looking forward to my daughter and me healing together and having a home to call our own,” she said.