Patient Files Lawsuit After Photo of Suicide Attempt Posted Online

As seen in this report

Last week, a Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center patient filed a lawsuit after a photograph of her failed suicide attempt was taken by a nurse and eventually posted to a "shock" website, Reuters reports.

In 2012, the patient tried to commit suicide by sticking pencils through her eyes. She was taken from the facility where the incident occurred and treated at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center. An unidentified nurse took a photo of the patient's injuries and shared it. A person who received the picture posted it to an undisclosed website, where it has since received more than 192,000 views, according to the lawsuit.

The patient was left blind as a result of the injury. She later received psychiatric treatment and got "her life back on track," but she became depressed when the photograph was widely viewed online, according to the lawsuit.

Before the lawsuit was filed, Douglas Johnson -- the patient's lawyer -- asked the medical center and county officials, who administer the hospital, to have the picture removed from the Internet. According to Johnson, the officials could make such a request by exercising their copyright of the photo because it was taken in their facility.

Reuters reports

A nurse at a Los Angeles hospital took a photo of a woman who gouged out her own eyes with pencils, and the patient sued the hospital and its administrators after the picture went viral on the Internet, her attorney said on Wednesday.

[...]

The as-yet unidentified nurse took the photograph of the patient with the "intact pencils sticking out of her eyes," then shared the unauthorized picture with another person, who passed the image to Joshua Shivers, the lawsuit said.

Shivers, in turn, used his mother's computer to post the image to a "shock" website, the suit stated, adding that the photo has since been viewed more than 192,000 times. The specific website to which it was posted was not disclosed.

"Everybody knows that as soon as someone gets their hands on something like this, it goes viral and the harm is done," said Douglas, who specializes in privacy cases.

Much more at the Reuters' link

Here we have a nurse violating the patient's privacy for her own entertainment. Disgusting.