By Alex Stein
Proving decision-causation in a suit for informed-consent violation is never easy. Things get even worse when a trial judge misinterprets the criteria for determining – counterfactually – whether the patient would have agreed to the chosen treatment if she were to receive full information about its benefits, risks, and alternatives. The recent Tennessee Supreme Court decision, White v. Beeks, — S.W.3d —- 2015 WL 2375458 (Tenn. 2015), is a case in point. Read More
By Alex Stein
This difficult problem and the underlying human tragedy have recently been adjudicated by the Supreme Court of Mississippi in Truddle v. Baptist Memorial Hosp.-Desoto, Inc., — So.3d —- (Miss. 2014).
A hospital patient suffering from a number of illnesses became agitated and aggressive. He took the IV out of his arm and attempted to leave the hospital. When nurses stopped him and forced him back to his room, he hallucinated that someone was trying to rape him. Despite these psychiatric symptoms, the patient was discharged and treated as an outpatient. During his outpatient treatment, he complained to his doctor that the medications he was taking “make him crazy.” Six days after his release from the hospital and two days after his last outpatient appointment, the patient barricaded himself in his bedroom and committed suicide. Read More
By Alex Stein
An important development of the lost-chance doctrine recently took place in Rash v. Providence Health & Services, — P.3d —- (Wash.App.Div.3 2014).
An 82-year old patient with a critical heart condition was hospitalized to undergo surgery. The patient’s heart condition made her death inevitable, but she managed to prolong her life with the help of medications. The hospital negligently failed to give the patient blood pressure medications. As a result, the patient suffered a series of strokes from which she died. The hospital’s negligence thus accelerated the patient’s demise.
The patient’s heirs sued the hospital for medical malpractice. The patient’s preexisting condition doomed the plaintiffs’ claim that the hospital’s negligence was the but-for cause of her death. The plaintiffs consequently demanded compensation for the lost chance of better outcome, pursuant to Herskovits v. Grp. Health Coop. of Puget Sound, 664 P.2d 474 (Wash. 1983); and Mohr, 262 P.3d 490 (Wash. 2011). Read More
By Alex Stein
As I wrote in my book with Ariel Porat, Tort Liability Under Uncertainty, our torts system must develop systematic remedy for wrongful inflictions of evidentiary harm.
The Florida Supreme Court’s recent decision, Saunders v. Dickens, — So.3d —- (Fla. 2014), is a case in point. Read More