Utah Nurse Wubbels Reaches $500,000 Settlement

[tnbutterfly - Mary]

The Utah nurse who was arrested two months ago for refusing to let a police detective take blood from an unconscious patient confirmed on Tuesday that a $500,000 settlement with Salt Lake City and the university that runs her hospital has been reached.

Alex Wubbels has always stressed that her main concern was "protecting hospital staff and preventing the same conflict from happening again."

Wubbels plans to use a portion of the money to assist people to get body camera footage of incidents of themselves.

"We all deserve to know the truth and the truth comes when you see the actual raw footage and that's what happened in my case," Wubbels said. "No matter how truthful I was in telling my story, it was nothing compared to what people saw and the visceral reaction people experienced when watching the footage of the experience that I went through."

Wubbels also plans to make a donation to the Utah Nurses Association and will help spearhead the #EndNurseAbuse campaign by the American Nurses Association.

For more on this story see:

Utah nurse who refused to draw blood from unconscious patient settles over rough arrest

Utah Nurse Alex Wubbels Arrested by Police Talks with allnurses.com at ENA 2017 Conference.

[Accolay]

Not all settlements are taxable. It depends on the way they are structured and often precisely what the "cause of action" that leads to settlement is actually for - I'd be surprised if this one is, in fact, taxable. Generally only lost income settlements and true jury level punitive awards (cause settlement negates true punitive action, in a strict legal sense) are taxed.

Bolding mine. I'm neither a tax expert nor play one on tv, but are you sure about that?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/07/06/10-things-to-know-about-taxes-on-legal-settlements/#2a61fdeb2f88

When are Legal Settlements Taxable? - Henry+Horne

I think she was treated badly, wrongly, glad the officer was fired, glad she received a settlement, but do you really think this should have been more than $500k also considering that this money eventually comes from tax payers? Here's how much families settled for their loved ones being killed in notorious police shootings and etc. around the country:

How does $3 million compare to other police shooting settlements? – Twin Cities

[ohna]

I wouldn't accept it. Been there, done that from non medical field profession. I sued for a change. It was eating my life out but worth the fight. There are people out there who aggressively pressure you to break policies and rules or laws, twist your arms for them when they have other options. They don't want to wait. Their attitude, "I don't care about you but me. Do things I told you to do."

[ohna]

It's still a drop in the bucket. She is very nice to settle with them. If it was me, I wouldn't just sue for what happened to me but to some sort of how our laws protect rights of criminals. Let's face it, there are criminals who are treated better than innocent ones. I'm not implying that medical staff should just hand patient's information to anyone. There is something that can be done with it without having cops to lose their mind. After all, we all want to do the right thing and keep our job with integrity.