Coffey v. Tiffany

• Decision Date: 06 July 1914
• Parties: MARY COFFEY, Respondent, v. FLAVEL B. TIFFANY and JOSEPH W. HOWARD, Appellants
• Court: Kansas Court of Appeals

182 S.W. 495

192 Mo.App. 455

MARY COFFEY, Respondent, v. FLAVEL B. TIFFANY and JOSEPH W. HOWARD, Appellants

Court of Appeals of Missouri, Kansas City

July 6, 1914

Appeal from Jackson Circuit Court.--Hon. Harris Robinson, Judge.

AFFIRMED. (Judgment quashed on writ certiorari by Supreme Court.)

Affirmed.

Fred A Boxley, Scarritt, Scarritt, Jones & Miller and Denton Dunn for appellants.

Park & Brown and Atwood & Hill for respondent.

OPINION

JOHNSON, J.

--This is a malpractice suit. Defendants are practicing physicians in Kansas City and specialize in diseases of the eye. Each has had long experience in that profession and is recognized as a skillful and able practitioner. During the events in controversy Dr. Howard had his office with Dr. Tiffany and practiced both independently and as the assistant of Dr Tiffany.

Plaintiff a spinster forty-seven years of age, was a teacher of piano music and lived with her sister who was a school teacher. She had always been nearsighted and had worn glasses since early youth. According to her evidence she had had no other trouble with her eyes and used them without difficulty in the instruction of pupils of which she had a large class. On Saturday, February 6, 1909, she gave a well-attended piano recital at which she turned the music for the performers and to all outward appearances, her eyesight at that time was unimpaired. A number of witnesses who knew her intimately testified that, aside from short-sightedness, her eyes seemed normal and strong before she consulted defendants. Plaintiff testified that "a few days before that (the piano recital), I noticed before the left eye what apparently seemed to be little black specks, and they were annoying to me, as they would come and go and sometimes I would take my hands, as if to brush it away and then it was gone." On Monday morning following the recital, plaintiff attempted to call Dr. Tiffany by telephone to arrange for the examination and, if necessary, treatment, of her left eye, for these floating specks. He was away on a vacation but the young woman who was in his office as clerk answered the telephone and arranged for plaintiff to come to the office the next day and when plaintiff, accompanied by her sister, called, pursuant to this arrangement, the clerk received her, asked her a number of questions and recorded her answers in a large record book. Plaintiff stated: "She said to me that she would like to have me state what I came for, and she began by taking my name and address, and age, and then she asked me about my eyes. She said, 'I see you wear glasses.' I said I had worn them for near-sightedness since I was nine years of age, and then I told her as nearly as I can remember just what I told you, about these little black specks floating before my eyes, coming and going, and that the glasses I was then wearing had been fitted by an optician instead of by an oculist, and that I thought I would let Dr. Howard see if he could give me--if they were correctly fitted, and then he could examine my eye, and see if there was anything wrong with it.

"Q. Did this conversation take place in the presence of Dr. Howard? A. Yes, sir." Plaintiff then inquired of the clerk about the fee of Dr. Tiffany and was assured that "if no one had sent me she did not think he would be exorbitant."

Dr. Howard who was attending to Dr. Tiffany's practice in his absence then proceeded to examine plaintiff's eyes and made the usual chart tests. Plaintiff testified: "Then he covered up my right eye, and said for me to read it with the left eye alone. I begun testing the eye, I said that was the eye that had specks before it, but I did not say whether I could or could not see, was just beginning, when very suddenly he took his hand that way (indicating), and turned it around in front of me, and said, 'How many fingers did I hold up?' I said, 'Why, three fingers.' I said, 'I did not mean, Dr. Howard, I could not see out of the eye. I meant that I had had a specky condition, and I wondered about it.' And then he said he would try some other lens, to see if he could find anything I could see further with, and he tried two or three different glasses, and it was just about the same with each glass. I did not see any different, and I told him so; and he seemed in something of a hurry. He said he believed the glasses were fitted correctly, but we would go into the dark room, and he would examine the eye, and we went into the dark room. . . . after he covered the right eye, threw the light into the left eye, and took up a glass and began looking in the eye, and he looked for a period and then he says, 'I don't see anything wrong with the eye at all;' and, after awhile, he says, 'There is nothing the matter with the blood vessels, that is certain, for the reflex is too good,' and he spoke several times how good the reflex was. Then he told me to close my eyes, and he took his fingers and pressed on the ball of my eye, on top of the lid, and he says, 'The tension is good; there is no retinal trouble, the tension is good.' Then he took up the glass again, and he says, 'Well, it does seem to me that way at the back of your eye I can see some little black specks;' and I says, 'What would that indicate if you saw them? Anything serious?' He said, 'Oh, no, nothing serious. It might indicate it needed flushing,' and I supposed that he meant my system, but I did not inquire into it specially. . . . I told him I would pay for the examination, and he told me to wait until Dr. Tiffany returned; that he attended to those matters. I went out into the other room my sister and I and started to put our wraps on."

While they were putting on their wraps, Dr. Howard came in and requested them to remain longer. "He said," plaintiff and her sister testified, "he felt as if he would like to put something in, to dilate the pupil and then make another examination the next day. . . . he dropped something into the eye, into the corner of the eye; and we sat down, and in probably five minutes he came and dropped something in again; and then he came back again in about not longer than five minutes, and I have not been able to recall whether he dropped anything in that third time or not, but I think that he did, but, at any rate, he told us to go downstairs, and sit for a little while, that he was not through putting in yet, that he would be down and put some more in. . . . after a little time he came down and dropped in again, after starting to put it in my sister's eye, and finally saw the difference, and put it in my eye, and then he told me he wanted me to come back next morning for another examination of the eye; . . . I didn't notice anything especially out of the way that afternoon excepting that I did notice a peculiar dryness."

Plaintiff returned alone to the office the next day. She states that Dr. Howard "looked at the eye, and said the pupil was not as large as he wanted it, and I protested; it seemed to me it was about as large as it could be. . . . he said, 'No, it was not as large as he wanted it, and he dropped into my eye again, and told me to sit down and he would drop it in until it was as large as he wanted it, and he dropped it in at intervals until he had dropped in about six times, . . . He said it was large enough and we would go into the dark room and he would make another examination, and we went into the dark room, and only stayed there a short time, with the same result; he said he didn't find anything wrong, and we came out into the other room, preparatory to my leaving, when he said to me . . . I would like to put some different kind of medicine into your eye.' He said, 'It will turn it red, make it swell up, and look very badly, but,' he says, 'that will all pass away, and your eye will be clear and I believe that is everything you will need for your eye.' . . . He put two medicines in. . . . he took up one bottle first, from the swinging table in front of where I was sitting, it was a rather large bottle, about that long and wide (indicating); it had some kind of dark fluid in it, I noticed it specially, but he did not use it, put it down, then he took up a smaller bottle, and put that down, and turned away for an instant, and turned back for something else, and took something out of the bottle. . . . and he dropped into the corner of my eye quite a quantity of something. I remember after he done it, it ran down my cheek, I had to wipe it away with my handkerchief. . . . It was so severe it seemed . . . the eye was paralyzed, not much feeling in it at that time."

It was near the noon hour and plaintiff returned home. Immediately after leaving the office her face began to swell and other symptoms of injury to the eye ensued and grew in intensity during the afternoon. She gave lessons until three o'clock, when she found herself unable to go on with her work. She thus describes her condition: "The left side of my face was swollen a great deal . . . the left eye was entirely closed . . . the right eye was partially closed and the swelling extended into my neck and forehead." On looking into a mirror that evening she discovered that "my left eye was about half open, the lid drooping but I could not see anything out of it at all. . . . it felt as though it was still tightly swollen shut. It was difficult for me to think it was not, owing to the fact that when I closed the right eye I could see nothing at all, could not see the light or anything."

Plaintiff's sister telephoned Dr. Howard about the condition of her eye and the next day plaintiff again visited defendant's office. She testified, "he (Dr. Howard) turned around, and the first thing he said was, 'Well well, such a thing would not have happened once in a hundred times.' I told him I was greatly...