A St. Louis County judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Homer G. Phillips Nurses Alumni Inc., a local nursing organization, against a three-bed north St. Louis health center using the civil rights advocate’s name.
Judge Heather Cunningham ruled on Aug. 30 that the alumni organization for the former Homer G. Phillips nursing school and the newly constructed Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital do not provide the same level of health care services and that someone looking for the organization would not be confused between the two.
This comes after the alumni group argued last month in court that it trademarked the name in 2021.
The use of the name by the small health care center takes away from the former attorney and activist’s legacy, said Jobyna Foster, the Homer G. Phillips Nurses Alumni Inc. outreach coordinator.
“The individuals that are using the name have not come to us … and yet they're promoting themselves with the use of the name for profit and our hospital was for non for profit individuals,” Foster said. “The fact that we own the trademark also takes away from our legacy … that's a violation and a disrespect to our organization and to the Ville community.”
The Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital at Jefferson and Cass Avenues opened in January and was developed by Paul McKee. The hospital was formerly called Northside Urgent Care Hospital.
Cunningham’s ruling states that the nurses organization “does not have a trademark on the name alone, but on the name in relation to the nurse’s alumni group. Even if the use of Phillips’ name were enough to reach arbitrary or fanciful, this would not alone entitle Plaintiff to a favorable result.”
In court, the attorney for the alumni group said the nurses indeed provide health care services to the broader community, and they are not just a social organization.
“My clients provided testimonies and affidavits and sworn derogatory responses, indicating more than 40 individual events over the past five years where they provided health care services,” said Rick Voytas, the organization’s attorney. “And if we provide health care, and if this Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital is also providing health care, be it for a fee, hey, we're in the same business, essentially.”
Foster said there are different levels of care in the nursing field that people might not understand.
“There is primary care that we would provide that would cause that individual not to be confused about whether or not they should go to urgent care or whether or not they should go to the hospital,” she said. “Or should they call the Black nurses association or any of these schools of nursing so that they can get some advice.
“We're just not in a brick-and-mortar facility, but we are incorporated, and we are a group of nurses that will go out with our equipment and do whatever it needs to be done.”
Foster is concerned that with Phillips’ name being on the smaller hospital, the legacy of the large Black hospital in the Ville would diminish.
“We love that they are providing health care services there, but we don't love the fact that the hospital is using the profit that it is going to be received from using our name Homer G. Phillips,” Foster said. “They can name it Pruitt-Igoe. It's on Pruitt-Igoe's property line.”
Phillips fought for a well-funded Black hospital in the former Mill Creek Valley neighborhood. He was assassinated in 1931, and the city opened the 728-bed hospital six years later, naming it after the Black attorney.
The hospital trained many Black nurses across the region and the nation, during a time where Black medical students and applicants were not accepted into white schools or hospitals. Foster worked at the hospital from 1957 until it closed in 1979. She taught many Black nurses and medical professionals who came through the hospital over the years. She said the hospital was a source of connection for Black people in the community.
“It was a family-like setting in the hospital itself, let alone in the Ville,” Foster said. “You could go out of the hospital, and the people around in the community lived there and worked there, so when it closed, you could just imagine what it did to the families and the residents.”
Voytas said the group is discussing ways to appeal the decision and push for a jury trial.
