The photograph of a woman’s eyes gouged with pencils was shocking enough. But even more so, her attorney says, is the fact that a nurse at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center violated her privacy and shared the image — an act that eventually led to it going viral online.
As a result, the patient, whose name is not disclosed in court documents, has suffered anxiety over fears that people will figure out that it’s her in the photograph, which has been viewed more than 192,000 times, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“It’s a tragedy that a nurse sworn to protect their patients would ever do something like this,” her attorney Douglas Johnson said.
The woman and her conservator are suing the county, as well as two people — Joshua Shivers and his mother, Linda Araujo Shivers — who are accused of being behind the distribution of the photograph.
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