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PITTSBURGH (AP) — A Pennsylvania appeals court panel is reinstating several lawsuits against UPMC and a staffing agency after patients contracted hepatitis C from a former UPMC employee. The suits, filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court in 2012, accuse the defendants of negligence in failing to report the theft of fentanyl by a radiology technician at UPMC Presbyterian from March to May 2008. The technician, David Kwiatkowski, would inject the pain medicine into his own body and then refill the used syringes and place them back among the hospital's medical supplies. The lawsuit claims that if UPMC reported Kwiatkowski to the Drug Enforcement Administration, he would not have been able to infect seven patients with hepatitis at Hays Medical Center in Kansas. The hospital system didn't say if it would appeal.

Appeals court panel reinstates UPMC hepatitis lawsuits