Connecticut Supreme Court allows negligence suit over Caroline Ashworth shooting death

Connecticut's Supreme Court ruled that mental health providers owe a duty of care to identifiable victims. Angela Ashworth can now sue St. Vincent's over her daughter's 2022 murder.

Connecticut top court: psychiatric hospital can face negligence claims in Caroline Ashworth case

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled that mental health care providers owe a duty of "reasonable care" to protect identifiable victims when they know a patient poses an imminent risk of harm — a finding that allows Angela Ashworth's negligence claims against St. Vincent's Medical Center in Westport to proceed, insideinvestigator.org reports.

The ruling centres on the August 27, 2022 shooting death of Caroline Ashworth, who was killed by her former boyfriend, Michael Mollow, 57, the day after he was discharged from an involuntary psychiatric hold at St. Vincent's. Mollow subsequently killed himself. Branford police ruled the incident a murder-suicide.

Discharge after 44 hours

Mollow had admitted himself to Midstate Medical Center's emergency department one week before the killing, telling healthcare professionals he had homicidal ideations directed specifically at Caroline, that he owned firearms, and that he was using alcohol and drugs. He was placed on a 15-day involuntary psychiatric hold and later transferred to St. Vincent's Medical Center, owned by SVMC Holdings, Inc.

St. Vincent's released Mollow just 44 hours into that hold, on August 26, 2022. His discharge plan included no further supervision. Neither Caroline nor Branford police were notified of his release.

Angela Ashworth's lawsuit alleges SVMC is liable for Caroline's death on several grounds: that the hospital prematurely discharged Mollow while he was willing to remain in treatment, that it failed to conduct an adequate risk assessment, and that it failed to determine how Mollow might behave upon discharge if he encountered Caroline again. The suit further alleges the hospital did not take steps to warn Caroline of his stated homicidal ideations.

Lower court had dismissed the claims

A trial court had previously granted SVMC's motion to dismiss, relying on an earlier Supreme Court precedent that limited negligence suits against healthcare providers to claims brought by or on behalf of patients, except in narrowly defined circumstances.

The Connecticut Supreme Court reversed that position on several of Ashworth's counts. In its majority opinion, the court wrote: "We further hold, for the first time, that a mental health care provider who actually knows that his or her patient poses a substantial risk of imminent physical harm to an identifiable victim has a duty to exercise reasonable care to protect that victim from that danger."

The court found that a number of Ashworth's allegations — including that St. Vincent's failed to take reasonably necessary steps to control Mollow, discharged him prematurely before the 15-day hold had expired, and failed to contact Caroline to warn her — should be classified as negligence claims rather than medical malpractice, because they challenged the hospital's response to a known, substantial risk to an identifiable person.

One claim, alleging gross medical negligence, was not permitted to proceed.

Dissent: precedent leads off a cliff

Justice Steven D. Ecker filed a partial concurrence and partial dissent. Ecker argued that barring the gross negligence claim while allowing standard negligence claims exposed a deep inconsistency in the court's precedent. "We hold today that our case law allows the killer's estate to sue the psychiatric hospital for medical negligence but bars the victim's estate from doing so — unless, perhaps, the victim happens to have been married to her killer at the time of the murder, in which case the statutory prohibition somehow disappears," Ecker wrote. He called the outcome a demonstration of "the dangers of following ill-conceived precedent off the proverbial cliff" and argued that the earlier ruling should be overruled entirely.

Background: a relationship marked by control

According to the lawsuit Angela Ashworth filed against Mollow's estate, Branford police, and several healthcare companies, Mollow became increasingly controlling over the course of his roughly three-year relationship with Caroline. The relationship began when Caroline was 18 and Mollow was 57 and married. The lawsuit details that Mollow placed a GPS tracker in Caroline's car and monitored her movements without her knowledge, and that Caroline made multiple 911 calls in which she expressed fear that Mollow intended to harm her.

On August 15, 2022, Mollow reported to police that Caroline had stolen his truck. She subsequently moved out of his home and drove the vehicle to Alabama to visit her grandmother. The following week, Mollow sought treatment at Midstate Medical Center.

Trial set for 2027

The case is one of several interrelated lawsuits arising from the deaths. The administrator of Mollow's estate has also filed a separate suit against the town of Branford and several healthcare companies involved in Mollow's hospitalisation. Both cases are currently scheduled to go to trial in 2027.

The Supreme Court's ruling establishes, for the first time in Connecticut, an explicit duty for mental health providers to act on known threats against specific third parties — a standard that will now shape how the Ashworth claims are litigated at trial.

Source: Google News VC — Crime