Charity closing suit to be heard in B.R.

After sitting on the question for the better part of the year, the Louisiana Supreme Court has handed the Louisiana State University System a legal victory, ruling that a lawsuit challenging the closing of Charity Hospital must be heard in East Baton Rouge Parish.

A group of New Orleans lawyers, all working pro bono on behalf of seven former Charity patients, originally filed the suit in January 2008 asking the Orleans Parish court to order the reopening of the giant hospital or mandate that the state replace it with equivalent services.

The Supreme Court's decision means the case will be heard by a judge elected from the parish that is home to the LSU System and its Board of Supervisors, which has authority over Louisiana's system of hospitals for the uninsured.

The plaintiffs had hoped for a court in the parish where the seven Charity patients have resided for decades.

A trial court and the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal had denied LSU's request to move the case.

In the initial suit, the patients accused LSU of violating state law by shuttering Charity after Hurricane Katrina without a vote of the Legislature, as one statute requires for any hospital closing. The suit, which did not name the LSU governing board, posited that the decision to close the hospital came from LSU Health Sciences Center Chancellor Larry Hollier, making Orleans Parish, where Hollier is based, the proper venue for a lawsuit challenging the action.

State law and court precedents suggest in part that the proper venue for a lawsuit against a state agency is East Baton Rouge Parish or the district court "having jurisdiction in the parish in which the cause of action arises." But precedents allow courts to consider "convenience" -- where plaintiffs and their attorneys live and work -- when deciding venue in certain cases....