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When New York Mandated Vaccinations, Nurses Sued

When New York Mandated Ebola Vaccinations, Nurses Sued

Brynien v. Daines, et al.
Case #8853/2009 N.Y. Supreme Court

(Bloomberg Businessweek) --  
The Origin
In late March 2009 the H1N1 virus—aka swine flu—first appeared in California. Within a month the first Americans began to die from the virus. In June the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had declared it a pandemic. As the death toll mounted, companies scrambled to come up with a vaccine. By early fall, it was ready.
 
The Suit
Dr. Richard Daines, a former New York state health commissioner, ordered every health-care worker to be vaccinated against the virus. If they didn’t do so by Nov. 30, they could be fired. The New York State Public Employees Federation and three nurses led by Lorna Patterson, an emergency room nurse at the Albany Medical Center, sued Daines, claiming he’d exceeded his authority in issuing his order. Besides, Patterson said at a news conference, “it takes away from our freedom of choice.”
 
The Ruling
On Oct. 16, to the surprise of many, acting Justice Thomas McNamara of the New York State Supreme Court issued a stay, which prevented Daines’s mandate from going into effect. One argument that appeared to sway the judge was that the vaccine had been raced into production without proper testing. The nurses, their lawyer said after the stay was issued, “feel very strongly that they are being set up to be guinea pigs.”
 
The Outcome
The case never did get to trial. A few weeks later, New York Governor David Paterson suspended the mandatory vaccinations. The reason? A shortage of vaccines. The federal government was able to supply only one-fifth of the vaccines it had promised. In the end, swine flu made 60 million Americans sick; there were 273,000 hospitalizations and 12,400 deaths. But because this decade-old case was never resolved, we still don’t know whether a state official can mandate citizens to be vaccinated. With the anti-vax movement being what it is, you can rest assured we’ll see more cases like this one as soon as a vaccine for the new coronavirus becomes available.

 
• That didn’t take long: Among the 2,421 people stranded on the Grand Princess off the coast of California after the coronavirus swept through the ship, a half-dozen have already sued Princess Cruise Lines Ltd. More lawsuits are sure to come.

 
• The Theranos angle: On March 9, Fortress Investment Group LLC sued BioMérieux SA, which is working on a Covid-19 vaccine, claiming patents it bought from Theranos were being violated. BioMérieux denied the allegation. After a backlash, Fortress said it would offer royalty-free licenses. So Theranos’s technology isn’t worthless after all.
 
Nocera is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion.
 
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