Articles Posted in Medical Negligence

The Fourth District Court of Appeals in Florida has ruled that a pharmacist may be held liable for failure to follow the standard of care for pharmacists even though the pharmacist dispensed drugs pursuant to a doctor’s order.

The plaintiff alleged that the pharmacist should have intervened to stop the numerous overlapping presriptions for narcotics and other medications prescribed for plaintiff’s wife. Plaintiff’s wife died of a drug overdose.

The trial judge dismissed the case, saying that the pharmacist had no duty. The court of appeals reversed, holding that despite competing authority in Florida the complaint stated a cause of action. Read the opinion here.

The distinction between a lack of informed consent case and a pure medical battery case is set out in Blanchard v. Kellum, 975 S.W.2d 522 (Tenn. 1998). An informed consent case requires expert proof as to the standard of care (or recognized standard of acceptable professional practice) of similar medical professionals. The plaintiff must establish what information is provided to patients prior to the procedure, and how the information is disclosed to the patient, in order to prove that the professional deviated from the standard of care. In a medical battery case, on the other hand, the plaintiff must establish either that the patient was unaware that the doctor was going to perform the procedure, or that the patient did not authorize the procedure. Medical battery cases include those in which the doctor performs a surgery that has been discussed with the patient, but performs the surgery on the wrong part of the body (i.e., amputation of the wrong limb). A true medical battery case does not require expert witness testimony on the standard of care, because there is no prior consent to be judged.

This is complaint from a medical malpractice and medical battery case in which a surgeon mixed up two of his patients’ charts, leading him to perform a surgery on the plaintiff to which she had never consented. Download file

The Texas Supreme Court has held that it is not error for a judge to permit a lawyer who regularly represents defendants in medical negligence cases to sit on a medical neligence jury.

The lawyer/juror candidly admitted that he would tend to relate to the defense lawyers in the case and that he would tend to look at the case from their perspective. He did say he would do his best to be objective.

I would love to know why the plaintiff’s lawyer let this guy sit on the jury given these answers; perhaps there were worse jurors and the lawyer had to use all of the preemptory challenges on them. I certainly wouldn’t second guess the lawyer for the call (especially without knowing a whole lot more about the facts) – picking a jury is the hardest part of a trial. Judgments must be made quickly, often on gut instinct (even when you use a consultant) and require you do look across the venire and think what you will get if you use a challenge on the potential juror you are evaluating.

The highest court of New York has rejected in part the medical negligence claim of a woman who sued a doctor and others for emotional distress but permitted the claim of the child to go forward.

The mother claimed that the doctor told her that the seven week old fetus she was carrying in utero would likely be harmed by fibroid tumors in her uterous and recommended that she terminate the pregnancy. The drug methotrexate was given to accomplish that result. The drug was administered, and the woman thought that the pregnancy was terminated, but later discovered she was 28-weeks pregnant. She alleged that the dose of methotrexate that she was given was too small to terminate the pregnancy. She was told that the drug administration put the baby at risk for harm, but she decided not to have a late-term, out-of-state abortion.

The baby was born severly injured. Suit was filed on behalf of the child; the mother also filed suit for emotional distress. The Court of Appeals held that the mother could not assert a claim for emotional distress arising out of the birth the impaired child but could assert a claim for any injuries independent of the birth of the child. She was granted leave to amend her complaint to plead accordingly.

Those of us who have lived through a couple of the so-called medical malpractice insurance crises knew it was just a matter of time before the market softened. The time has come.

The industry has declared that the insurance crisis is over. Read this fascinating article.

Of course, the facts will not stop the health care industry or its insurers from continuing to press for tort reform. Insurers want to take the risk out of the risk business, and the health care industry wants protection from patients who sit on juries.

The Supreme Court of North Dakota has ruled that whether or not a reasonable patient would accept the risk of death from a procedure is a jury question and not one for which expert testimony is necessary. The plaintiff’s wife died after an IVP. The doctors admitted that they did not inform the patient of the risk of death.

Here is the opinion.

North Dakota does not appear to require expert testimony on what should have been disclosed to the patient; Tennessee law does require expert testimony on this subject. However, expert testimony should not be required on the issue of whether or not the reasonably prudent person would, under the circumstances, accept the risk of the procedure.

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Thanks to the Insurance Defense Blog.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling of the trial judge excluding certain experts in a medical negligence case, stating that Daubert’s role of ensuring that the courtroom door remains closed to junk science is not served by the exclusion of testimony supported by relevant experience. The Court further held the “exclusion of testimony in cases of medical experts is rarely justified as opposed to supposed experts in the area of product liability.”

Click here to read the opinion.

James’ vasectomy did not go as planned. His wife Corrine became pregnant. They filed suit against his urologist.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals held that Corrine could not file suit against the doctor because there was not a physican-patient relationship. In short, the Court ruled that Corrine did not establish that her husband’s doctor owed her a duty of care.

The dismissal of James’ claim on the ground of contributory negligence was also affirmed. (In Maryland, contributory negligence is still an absolute bar to recovery.) The basis for the claim of contributory negligence included the failure to follow doctor’s orders.

A neurosurgeon has written an op-ed piece about his experience with medical negligence litigation and offering his opinion about the role it plays in our society. The article is titled “How Malpractice Suits Keep My Profession Honest.”

The writer gives this example of the pressure faced by doctors who testify for patients: “I remember a Detroit neurosurgeon calling me in desperation to ask what to do after he had testified against a surgeon who had operated on the wrong side of a patient’s head. The Detroit doctor worried that he was being needlessly scrutinized by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. It reminded me of a case in which I had been an expert witness here in Washington that led to complaints from the professor who had performed the surgery and unrelenting nit-picking from the association. My advice to the Detroit doctor? Resign from the association. That’s what I did.”

Isn’t it nice to see a member of the profession speak out on the side of his patients?