Question: When a doctor could not find a dislodged biopsy guide wire, he abandoned his search after informing the patient of his intention to retrieve it at a later date. Two months later, he was successful in locating and removing the foreign body, but the patient alleged she suffered pain and anxiety in the interim. She filed a negligence lawsuit and, based on the “obvious” nature of her injuries, called no expert witness to testify on her behalf.
Dr. S.Y. Tan
Which of the following choices is best?
A. Expert testimony is always needed to establish the applicable standard of care in medical negligence lawsuits.
B. Although a plaintiff is not qualified to expound on medical matters, he/she can offer evidence from learned treatises and medical texts.
C. The jury is the one who determines whether a plaintiff can invoke either the res ipsa loquitur doctrine or the “common knowledge” rule to obviate the need for an expert witness.
D. This patient will likely win her case.
E. All are incorrect.
Answer: E. It is well-established law that the question of negligence must be decided by reference to relevant medical standards of care for which the plaintiff carries the burden of proving through expert medical testimony. Only a professional, duly qualified by the court as an expert witness, is allowed to offer medical testimony – whereas the plaintiff typically will be disqualified from playing this role because of the complexity of issues involved.
However, under either the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur (“the thing speaks for itself”) or the “common knowledge” rule, a court (i.e., the judge) may allow the jury to infer negligence in the absence of expert testimony.
The res doctrine is invoked where there is only circumstantial but no direct evidence, and three conditions are met: 1) The injury would not have occurred in the absence of someone’s negligence; 2) the plaintiff was not at fault; and 3) the defendant had total control of the instrumentality that led to the injury.
The closely related “common knowledge” rule relies on the everyday knowledge and experience of the layperson to identify plain and obvious negligent conduct, which then allows the judge to waive the expert requirement.
The two principles are frequently used interchangeably, ultimately favoring the plaintiff by dispensing with the difficult and expensive task of securing a qualified expert willing to testify against a doctor defendant.
The best example of res in action is the surgeon who inadvertently leaves behind a sponge or instrument inside a body cavity. Other successfully litigated examples include a cardiac arrest in the operating room, hypoxia in the recovery room, burns to the buttock, gangrene after the accidental injection of penicillin into an artery, air trapped subcutaneously from a displaced needle, and a pierced eyeball during a procedure.
A particularly well-known example is Ybarra v. Spangard, in which the patient developed shoulder injuries during an appendectomy.1 The Supreme Court of California felt it was appropriate to place the burden on the operating room defendants to explain how the patient, unconscious under general anesthesia throughout the procedure, sustained the shoulder injury.
The scenario provided in the opening question is taken from a 2013 New York case, James v. Wormuth, in which the plaintiff relied on the res doctrine.2 The defendant doctor had left a guide wire in the plaintiff’s chest following a biopsy and was unable to locate it after a 20-minute search. However, he was able to retrieve the wire 2 months later under C-arm imaging.
The plaintiff sued the doctor for pain and anxiety, but did not call any expert witness, relying instead on the “foreign object” basis for invoking the res doctrine. The lower court ruled for the doctor, and the court of appeals affirmed.
It reasoned that the object was left behind deliberately, not unintentionally, and that under the circumstances of the case, an expert witness was needed to set out the applicable standard of care, without which a jury could not determine whether the doctor’s professional judgment breached the requisite standard. The court also ruled that the plaintiff failed to satisfy the “exclusive control” requirement of the res doctrine, because several other individuals participated to an extent in the medical procedure.
Hawaii’s case of Barbee v. Queen’s Medical Center is illustrative of the “common knowledge” rule.3 Mr. Barbee, age 75 years, underwent laparoscopic nephrectomy for a malignancy. Massive bleeding complicated his postoperative course, the hemoglobin falling into the 3 range, and he required emergent reoperation. Over the next 18 months, the patient progressively deteriorated, eventually requiring dialysis and dying from a stroke and intestinal volvulus.