Anicet v. Gant

In Anicet v. Gant (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1991) 580 So.2d 273, the defendant was committed to a state hospital which cared for insane and violent persons. The plaintiff was employed by the institution to work with these very patients, who were confined to a special ward of the hospital. In response to the plaintiff's warning that he would be put in isolation if his violent conduct continued, the defendant threw a heavy ashtray at the plaintiff's head, causing severe injury. Relying on the fact that the plaintiff's "duties specifically included the treatment and, if possible, the control of patients like the defendant, of whose dangerous tendencies he was well aware" (id. at p. 274), the court held that the patient owed his care provider no duty of care. The same appellate court applied its holding in Anicet in a subsequent opinion, Mujica v. Turner (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 1991) 582 So.2d 24, ruling that a physical therapist in charge of the Alzheimer's program at a nursing home could not recover from an Alzheimer's patient who pushed her, causing injury. The court held, "Although we agree that ordinarily a mental incompetent is responsible for his own torts, ... this rule is inapplicable when the incompetent has been institutionalized, as here, because of her mental incompetency and injures one of her caretakers while in such institution." (Id. at p. 25.) Although the Anicet court used language similar to that found in the cases involving the firefighter's rule, it emphasized that its ruling was not based on the doctrine of assumption of the risk. "Rather we conclude that no duty to refrain from violent conduct arises on the part of a person who has no capacity to control it to one who is specifically employed to do just that." (Anicet, supra, at p. 277.)