The New York Supreme Court has acquitted 10 Filipino nurses from criminal charges that they endangered their patients when they resigned from their jobs in a Long Island nursing home in 2006, in protest against recruitment violations.

The case was brought against the nurses by the Sentosa Recruitment Agency which hired them from the Philippines for a three-year working contract in the United States.

In the decision issued on Tuesday, and relayed to the Philippine Daily Inquirer by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) on Friday, the court’s second appellate division also stopped the prosecutor of Suffolk district county, where the original suit was filed, from pursuing criminal charges against the 10 nurses and their lawyer.

The 10 nurses who were acquitted were Elmer Jacinto, Juliet Anilao, Harriet Avila. Mark de la Cruz, Claudine Gamiao, Jennifer Lampe, Rizza Maulion, James Millena, Ma. Theresa Ramos and Ranier Sichon.

Some of the nurses had been working as doctors in the Philippines and took up nursing to be able to work in the US. Jacinto, for instance, a licensed doctor, topped the medical board examinations in 2004.

The nurses’ lawyer, Felix Vinluan, who was accused of conspiring with the petitioners, was also acquitted.

Involuntary servitude outlawed

The New York court granted the nurses’ petition to stop the Suffolk county from prosecuting them, saying that their resignation did not endanger their patients as they did it after their shifts ended.

The court also noted that the prosecution’s insistence that the nurses’ resignation affected the welfare of their patients, which included children, were “speculative” and that they had the “constitutional right to be free from involuntary service.”

Stopping the nurses from resigning their jobs was a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, the court said.

“The imposition of limitation upon the nurses’ ability to freely exercise their right to resign from the service of an employer who allegedly failed to fulfill the promises and commitments made to them is the antithesis of the free and voluntary system of labor envisioned by the framers of the Thirteenth Amendment,” the court said.

The court also ruled that Vinluan, an immigration lawyer, had acted in good faith when he advised his clients to take action against Sentosa, the recruitment firm.

The nurses are part of a group of 27 Filipino health workers recruited to work by the Philippine-based Sentosa Recruitment Agency (SRA) for its New York-based parent company, the Sentosa Care Group.

The health workers group and the Sentosa group have swapped suits in the US and in the Philippines.

$50-M damage suit

In the US case that was the subject of the New York court decision, Sentosa Care brought a $50-million damage suit against 10 nurses from the group and their lawyer Vinluan for breach of contract, conspiracy and child endangerment.

The defendants were accused of endangering sick patients at the Avalon Gardens Rehabilitation and Health Care Center in Smithtown, New York, when they suddenly resigned en masse on April 7, 2006.

According to court documents, the nurses had claimed that the recruitment firm did not follow the contract stipulations on pay, housing and working conditions, despite repeated complaints.

In 2007, the US Department of Justice dismissed charges of recruitment violations filed by 26 health care workers, including the 10 nurses, against SRA and Sentosa Care. The complainants accused Sentosa of misrepresentation in their recruitment, substitution of contracts, withholding of salaries and violations of regulations in the hiring of overseas workers.

Cases lost in RP

In the Philippines, the nurses’ group last year successively lost the cases it filed against Sentosa for illegal recruitment, contract violations and illegal dismissal and nonpayment of salaries and other money claims with the POEA, the National Labor Relations Commission and the Department of Justice.

By : PDINEWS