Better case.

In the case at hand, a video recording shows that a taxicab last March apparently dropped off a woman named Carol Reyes on the street near the Union Rescue Mission, Skid Row's largest mission. Wearing what appeared to be a hospital gown and slippers, she wandered for a few minutes until a mission worker went out and brought her in. She was disoriented, but reportedly she had been dismissed by the hospital in Bellflower.

At first blush, it seems the better case is against the taxi driver, not the hospital. If the hospital paid the taxi driver to deliver her to the mission, it was the driver who failed to complete the journey by not escorting her the final 10 steps or so into the mission.

This is not to exonerate the hospital Given what we've been told about the situation, it clearly erred. It should have done a much better job of coordinating the woman's hand-off to the mission, not to mention putting the woman in appropriate dress.

But the irony is that hospitals and homeless service providers have been working on a system to do just that.

As you can read in the opinion pieces on the opposite page, hospitals and missions have come up with plans to improve such transfers.

Let's hope another lawsuit or grandstand press conference doesn't scuttle that effort.

Charles Crumpley is the editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at [e-mail].