'Please Don't Do That': Rectal Exam Leads to Lawsuit
NEW YORK -- A construction worker claimed in a lawsuit that when he
went to a hospital after being hit on the forehead by a falling wooden
beam, emergency room staffers forcibly gave him a rectal examination.
Brian Persaud, 38, says in court papers that after he denied a request
by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital emergency room employees to examine
his rectum, he was "assaulted, battered and falsely imprisoned."
His lawyer, Gerrard M. Marrone, said he and Persaud later learned the
exam was one way of determining whether he had suffered spinal damage
in the accident.
Marrone said his client got eight stitches for a cut over his eyebrow.
Then, Marrone said, emergency room staffers insisted on examining his
rectum and held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that." He
said Persaud hit a doctor while flailing around and staffers gave him
an injection, which knocked him out, and performed the rectal exam.
Persaud woke up handcuffed to a bed and with an oxygen tube down his
throat, the lawyer said, and spent three days in a detention center.
A request by the hospital to dismiss Persaud's lawsuit was denied by
Justice Alice Schlesinger, who ordered a trial to start March 31.
Hospital spokesman Bryan Dotson said, "While it would be inappropriate
for us to comment on specifics of the case, we believe it is
completely without merit and intend to contest it vigorously."
Persaud's lawsuit, filed in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, seeks
unspecified damages. A judge dismissed a misdemeanor assault charge
against him.
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