By FRANK ELTMAN
Associated Press

GARDEN CITY - An appeals court has cleared 10 nurses of criminal charges after they were accused of endangering patients by resigning en masse from a Long Island nursing home to protest working conditions.

An attorney who was prosecuted for advising them also was cleared.

The nurses, recruited from the Philippines to help ease a staffing shortage in the U.S., were arrested on misdemeanor conspiracy and child-endangerment charges after they quit their jobs in April 2006 without notice.

The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office said the nurses jeopardized the health of patients, including some terminally ill children on ventilators who required constant monitoring.

The case attracted headlines in Manila, where hearings were held in 2007 in that country's Senate and House of Representatives.

The nurses contended that they left work at the end of their shifts and that no patient was ever in danger. One, Maria Theresa Ramos, told The Associated Press she stayed four hours past the scheduled end of her shift to ensure that the patients received proper care.

The appellate court found that "coverage (by other nurses) was indeed obtained and no facts suggesting an imminent threat to the well-being of the children have been alleged." It said the charges violated the nurses' 13th Amendment rights protecting against "involuntary servitude."

"Complete elation - I was in tears," defense attorney James Druker said Friday after receiving the court's decision the night before. Druker said besides the 10 nurses, attorney Felix Vinluan was cleared of charges that he improperly advised them to quit their jobs.

The court said that to "potentially inflict punishment for the good-faith provision of legal advice is, in our view, more than a First Amendment violation. It is an assault on the adversarial system of justice."

A spokesman for District Attorney Thomas Spota had no immediate comment. A decision on whether to appeal to the state's highest court was expected in the next few days.

The nurses said they quit their jobs at a Smithtown facility run by Sentosa Health Care because they were made to perform tasks they deemed demeaning and below their job descriptions. There were also disputes about scheduling and pay.

Druker said that while some of the nurses have since found employment elsewhere, a number of them had difficulty getting other nursing jobs because of a possible criminal trial.

He said repeated requests to then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer to appoint a special prosecutor in the case went ignored. He wanted an outside prosecutor because he contended that influential Democrats had taken an interest in the case at the behest of Howard Fensterman, an attorney for Sentosa who is active in Democratic politics.

After the nurses complained that they were being mistreated, a suspension order was issued against a Sentosa Health Care affiliate in the Philippines, preventing them from recruiting nurses to work in the U.S. But the suspension was later lifted. The nurses believe that decision was politically motivated, because Sen. Charles Schumer got involved.

The New York Democrat wrote letters in June 2006 to the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration and the Philippines labor secretary, and later to Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, asking that they meet with Sentosa representatives and then "take any actions that you consider appropriate."

Schumer said the letters were the result of his efforts to help address the nationwide shortage of nurses and insisted that they had "no connection whatsoever" to political donations.

Gary Lewi, a spokesman for Sentosa and Fensterman, did not immediatly comment on the court ruling, but previously called the allegations of political influence "a pathetic smoke screen" to divert attention from the allegations that pediatric patients were abandoned "in a deliberate act of labor sabotage."