Employee Drug Testing: Third Parties' Duty of Care

In April, Pennsylvania became the latest state to hold that a company hired by an employer to administer employee drug tests owes a duty of reasonable care to the employees subjected to those tests. In Renee Sharpe v. St. Luke's Hosp., 821 A.2d 1215 (Pa. Apr. 25, 2003), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the defendant, a hospital, owed a duty of care to Sharpe, an employee of Federal Express, with regard to collection and handling of her urine specimen for the employment-related drug test that plaintiff was required to undergo. Sharpe had been fired from Federal Express after her drug test came back positive for cocaine use and she claimed the positive result was attributable to the errors made by the hospital in collecting, labeling and processing her urine sample before sending it to a laboratory for testing. The trial court granted summary judgment for the hospital, concluding that the hospital owed no duty of care to Sharpe, with whom it had no contract. The Pennsylvania Superior Court affirmed, by a 2-1 margin, although two of the three judges concluded that the applicable rule of law was wrong and should be overruled. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed.