CAVEAT HOSPITIA: Suits Alleging Negligent Credentialing Against Hospitals Get Exemption from Tort Reform

By Alex Stein

Policymakers and scholars interested in medical malpractice and torts generally should read Billeaudeau v. Opelousas General Hospital Authority, — So.3d —-, 2016 WL 6123862 (La. 2016). In this recent and important decision, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that suits alleging negligent credentialing against a hospital sound in regular negligence, rather than medical malpractice, and consequently fall outside the purview of the state’s Medical Malpractice Act (MMA) and its limitations on liability. The Court made this decision in connection with the state’s cap on damages recoverable in medical malpractice actions, La. Rev. Stat. § 40:1231.2(B)(1), which limits the total amount that courts can award the victim to $500,000, plus interest and cost, on top of the victim’s future expenditures on medical care and support. For many victims of medical malpractice and their families this cap amount is meager, but the Court nonetheless upheld its constitutionality back in 1992. See Butler v. Flint Goodrich Hosp., 607 So.2d 517 (La. 1992).

The Court has now decided that suits alleging negligent credentialing against hospitals are not subject to this cap and that successful plaintiffs consequently will recover full compensation for any proven damage. Read More

Teamwork as Malpractice

By Alex Stein

A team of doctors employed by the same hospital had failed to properly monitor a patient after his heart surgery in order to rule out a well-known neurological complication. The patient subsequently developed an irreversible neurological disorder, and a suit ensued.

The patient’s expert identified the team’s omission as malpractice. However, he was unable to attribute the omission to any specific member of the doctors’ team. Under the common law doctrine of vicarious liability, because the omission could be attributed to the team as a whole, the patient could still win his suit against the hospital. This doctrine holds that a hospital employing a team of doctors assumes vicarious liability for the team’s malpractice even when there is no way to single out the defaulting team member.

Washington’s appellate court, however, has decided that this doctrine was inapplicable because medical malpractice is a statutory, rather than common law, tort under Washington law.  Grove v. Peace Health St. Joseph Hospital, — P.3d —-, 2013 WL 5786888 (Wash.App. Div. 1 2013). Read More