Somerset Medical Center—Saint Luke’s Hospital dispute over Cullen

The dispute between Somerset Medical Center and Saint Luke’s Hospital turned on a question larger than which hospital had employed Charles Cullen: which institution should answer for the harms he caused, and what did each know before he moved on? Lawsuits by patients’ families and later judicial rulings made hospital investigations, warnings, and responsibility for Cullen’s movement between institutions part of the same contested history.

The dispute’s origins

The suits argued that responsibility lay with hospitals that had previously hired Cullen and then allowed him to move on. The families’ pleadings named Saint Barnabas Medical Center as the serial killer’s birthing ground, placing the earliest institutional warning signs in the frame of later litigation. At Saint Barnabas, two intravenous bags tested positive for insulin, and investigators found no prescription or chart notation explaining its administration. Those findings had prompted a hospital investigation that narrowed suspicion toward staff, including Cullen, but did not resolve the case before his employment there ended.

The contrast between that unresolved history and Cullen’s later movement through hospitals helped shape the liability dispute. The litigation was not simply about where a particular death occurred; it asked whether a previous employer’s response to warning signs had consequences for patients treated elsewhere. That framing made the exchange—or absence—of information between institutions central to the question of responsibility.

Saint Luke’s investigations and the families’ suits

Five families of former patients brought civil suits against Saint Luke’s Hospital. Saint Luke’s sought dismissal on the ground that the cases had been filed beyond the two-year statute of limitations. Lehigh County Judge Edward D. Reibman ruled that the claims remained relevant, allowing the cases to proceed past that threshold. The hospital ultimately settled with the families out of court; the settlement terms were sealed, so the book identifies no amounts or individual resolutions.

The court records described disagreement over what Saint Luke’s had learned while reviewing possible drug diversion and patient harm. Attorney Paul Laughlin recalled proposing chart reviews to determine whether diverted vecuronium bromide had been improperly administered. His testimony was that particularized suspicion of Cullen harming patients had not been brought to his attention, but interview notes and testimony from nurse Patricia Medellin left room for a different inference. The record therefore preserved a dispute not only about what the hospital did, but also about what its inquiry disclosed and who understood the possible connection to patient deaths.

Saint Luke’s later chart reviews did not identify Cullen’s involvement. After Cullen returned from leave in July 2002, the hospital’s general counsel directed that a report be prepared and additional reviews conducted. A risk manager and nursing supervisor examined charts of patients who had died during the weekend when diverted medications were found; the supervisor testified that she had not previously performed such a review and did not know its purpose when she was asked to do it. The risk manager later said Laughlin had reported finding no evidence of foul play. The inquiries failed to identify suspicious vecuronium administration or deaths, and the chief executive referred Cullen to the State Board of Nursing for follow-up.

Even after law enforcement became involved, an outside physician’s review of patient charts did not lead Saint Luke’s to conclude that Cullen had harmed patients. Cullen later confessed to killing the five decedents whose cases were at issue in the Saint Luke’s suits. The book also states that seven patients in total had been specifically identified as killed by him at that hospital. The distance between the institution’s inconclusive reviews and the later confessions gives the litigation its sharpest evidentiary reversal, while not resolving every disagreement over what particular hospital officials knew at the time.

Somerset’s position and the ruling

In the wider litigation, Somerset Medical Center’s lawyers argued that Saint Luke’s should be responsible for lawsuits brought by families of Somerset victims. The New Jersey Superior Court did not decide the specific merits of those underlying cases. Judge Garruto sided with Somerset on the responsibility issue, and the book identifies Saint Luke’s communications with other hospitals as a principal reason for the decision.

Saint Luke’s administrators had called some hospitals to advise against hiring Cullen but had not alerted others. In Judge Garruto’s view, that selective warning had effectively made the hospital a participant in deciding which institutions would receive notice of the risk. His ruling characterized the consequences starkly: Saint Luke’s had effectively decided who would live and who would die. The judgment thus connected institutional communication to patient safety while stopping short of adjudicating the merits of each family’s claim.

Responsibility across institutions

The dispute brings two different forms of institutional failure into focus: investigations that did not identify Cullen’s role, and warnings that did not reach every hospital that might have acted on them. At Somerset, investigators initially faced a five-month internal inquiry that had produced only four pieces of paper and no answers; the hospital had not supplied detectives with Pyxis drug records, interviews, or physical evidence. Those obstacles help explain why responsibility could not be reduced to one cleanly documented decision or a single moment of disclosure.

The postscript’s account of the lawsuits shows how accountability followed Cullen across institutional boundaries. Families alleged that earlier employers had enabled his continued movement by failing to stop him or adequately warn others; Saint Luke’s and Somerset disputed how the resulting liability should be allocated. The court’s focus on whom Saint Luke’s contacted made the practical consequences of partial disclosure central: information existed, but its distribution was uneven. The dispute therefore concerns not only the acts attributed to Cullen, but also the institutional choices that shaped whether later employers were warned and whether families could seek redress.