Craig ex rel. Craig v. Oakwood Hosp.

• Decision Date: 23 July 2004
• Docket Number: Docket No. 121407-121409,Docket No. 121419. Calendar No. 5.,Docket No. 121405
• Parties: Antonio CRAIG, by his next friend, Kimberly CRAIG, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. OAKWOOD HOSPITAL, Henry Ford and Ajit Kittur, M.D., Defendant.
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court

684 N.W.2d 296

471 Mich. 67

Antonio CRAIG, by his next friend, Kimberly CRAIG, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. OAKWOOD HOSPITAL, Henry Ford and Ajit Kittur, M.D., Defendant.

Docket Nos. 121405, 121407-121409, 121419. Calendar No. 5.

Supreme Court of Michigan.

Argued March 10, 2004.

Decided July 23, 2004.

Mark L. Silverman, M.D., J.D., P.C. (by Mark L. Silverman, M.D.), Birmingham, MI, for the plaintiff.

Dickinson Wright PLLC (by Barbara H. Erard and Phillip J. DeRosier), Detroit, MI, for the Oakwood Hospital.

Kallas & Henk, P.C. (by Leonard A. Henk), Bloomfield, MI, and Kitch Drutchas Wagner Denardis & Valitutti (by Susan Healy Zitterman), Detroit, MI, for the Henry Ford Health System.

John P. Jacobs, P.C. (by John P. Jacobs), Detroit, MI, for Elias G. Gennaoui, M.D. and Associated Physicians, P.C.

Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP (by Chris E. Rossman and Jason Schian Conti), Detroit, MI, for the Michigan Health and Hospital Association.

Plunkett & Cooney, P.C. (by Mary Massaron Ross), Detroit, MI, for The Defense Research Institute.

Foster, Swift, Collins & Smith, P.C. (by Thomas R. Meagher), Lansing, MI, for the Michigan Defense Trial Counsel.

Plunkett & Cooney, P.C. (by Robert G. Kamenec), Bloomfield Hills, MI, for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

YOUNG, J.

Plaintiff, now an adult, suffers from cerebral palsy, mental retardation, and a number of other neurological and physical ailments. He argues, through his mother as next friend, that these conditions are the proximate results of defendants' negligence in treating his mother during her labor leading to his delivery. Specifically, plaintiff maintains that defendants administered an excessive amount of a contraction-inducing medication to his mother and were unable to detect signs of fetal distress because they failed to make appropriate use of fetal monitoring devices. The trial court denied defendants' request to hold a Davis-Frye hearing on expert testimony that purported to draw a causal connection between these breaches of the standard of care and plaintiff's present neurological and physiological condition.

Following a five week trial, the jury returned a verdict in plaintiffs favor. The trial court thereafter determined that defendant Henry Ford Health System was liable as a successor corporation to defendant Associated Physicians, P.C. The trial court denied the defendants motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or for a new trial. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of liability, but ordered remittitur on lost wage earning capacity.¹ We reverse and remand the matter for entry of judgment in defendants favor.

I. FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

This appeal arises out of the events surrounding plaintiff's birth on July 16, 1980. Plaintiff's mother, Kimberly Craig, received prenatal care from defendant Associated Physicians, P.C. Associated Physicians employed four obstetricians, including defendants Dr. Elias Gennaoui and Dr. Ajit Kittur.² Ms. Craig met with each obstetrician at some point before plaintiff's birth, but was primarily attended to by Dr. Gennaoui during plaintiff's delivery.

Ms. Craig's amniotic and chorionic membranes ruptured at approximately 5:30 A.M. on July 16, 1980, and she was admitted to defendant Oakwood Hospital within a half hour. The resident doctor on call at the time noted that plaintiff's fetal heart tones were within a normal range. Dr. Kittur, who was the attending physician on staff when Ms. Craig was admitted, requested that Ms. Craig be given an intravenous (IV) "keep open" line to maintain hydration and to establish a channel for the intravenous administration of medication, should the need arise. Nurses applied an external fetal-uterine monitor to Ms. Craig at approximately 9:30 A.M., at which time she still had not experienced contractions. At 10:00, Ms. Craig began to receive 1000 cc of a 5% Ringer's lactate solution through the "keep open" IV line.

Dr. Gennaoui, who had taken over for Dr. Kittur sometime after Ms. Craig was admitted, met with Ms. Craig at approximately 11:00 A.M. He was concerned that Ms. Craig and her child had been exposed to infection since her membranes burst earlier that morning,³ and concluded that Ms. Craig should be given ten units of Pitocin⁴ in order to induce labor.⁵ From 11:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M., Ms. Craig was given doses of Pitocin in increasing amounts.

One of the central issues at trial was the precise amount of Pitocin administered to Ms. Craig and whether, as plaintiff argued, she had mistakenly received a double dosage. Plaintiff's standard of care expert, Paul Gatewood, M.D., testified that Ms. Craig's medical records reveal that she was inadvertently given two doses of Pitocin. The first was administered shortly after 11:00 a.m. upon Dr. Gennaoui's order. Nurse Quinlan wrote a check on Dr. Gennaoui's order for Pitocin to indicate, according to Dr. Gatewood, that she had performed Dr. Gennaoui's request and had administered Pitocin through the 5% Ringer's lactate solution.

Dr. Gatewood noted, however, that another nurse, Tyra, had written in Ms. Craig's records that she had administered Pitocin through D5W,⁶ a solution other than the 5% Ringer's lactate Ms. Craig was already receiving intravenously. Thus, according to Dr. Gatewood's testimony, Dr. Gennaoui had given a single order for Pitocin that had been filled twice — once by Nurse Quinlan through the 5% Ringer's lactate solution, and once by Nurse Tyra through the D5W solution.

Also contested at trial was whether Ms. Craig's labor presented any complications. Medical records compiled after plaintiff's birth show that Ms. Craig began experiencing contractions of "moderate" strength after receiving Pitocin and that "moderate" contractions continued until plaintiff's delivery.

Plaintiff contends, however, that the records from a fetal uterine monitor tell a different story. These records, according to Dr. Gatewood, show that plaintiff experienced recurrent decelerations of his heart rate, or bradycardia, after Ms. Craig began to receive Pitocin. Dr. Gatewood explained at trial that the decelerations occurred because the Pitocin administered to Ms. Craig caused contractions of excessive intensity and duration. Plaintiff's umbilical cord became compressed because of these contractions, thereby decreasing the amount of blood flowing to plaintiff. The result was the pattern of decelerations in heart rate shown by the fetal uterine monitor and a decrease in the amount of oxygen flowing to plaintiff's brain, or "hypoxia" in medical parlance.

Plaintiff was born shortly before 7:00 P.M. that day. His Apgar scores, 8 and 9 (on a one to ten scale), were well within the typical range,⁷ indicating that plaintiff appeared to be a normal, healthy baby. Plaintiff also contests this Apgar assessment, maintaining that a picture of plaintiff taken shortly after his birth depicts an infant who had recently suffered head trauma. Specifically, plaintiff points to a "large ridge" across his forehead as evidence of "facial or brow molding," and argues that the photograph clearly reveals bruising and edema,⁸ both sure signs of trauma. In addition, plaintiff contends that the postdelivery picture shows him "gazing" to the right while holding his left hand in a cortical position and that these "are indicative of acute brain injury."

Two days after his birth, plaintiff was examined by pediatrician Dr. Carolyn Johnson, who concluded that plaintiff seemed to be healthy and displayed normal cognitive functions. Plaintiff received a vastly different diagnosis approximately one year later. On June 6, 1981, Ms. Craig had plaintiff examined by Dr. Michael Nigro, a pediatric neurologist, after noticing that plaintiff began to seem developmentally slow after his third month. Dr. Nigro diagnosed plaintiff with nonprogressive encephalopathy⁹ with global developmental delay and mild spasticity. He concluded at the time and maintained throughout this trial that the etiology or cause of plaintiff's condition was unclear.¹⁰

Plaintiff initiated the present lawsuit in 1994 through his mother, Kimberly Craig, as next friend. He alleged that Drs. Gennaoui and Kittur committed medical malpractice in failing to monitor plaintiff's heartbeat with an internal uterine catheter until 2:30 P.M. on July 16, 1980. Further, he alleged that Dr. Gennaoui and his colleagues negligently administered Pitocin to Ms. Craig despite the fact that she presented physical symptoms indicating that Pitocin was unnecessary and potentially harmful. As a result, plaintiff alleged, plaintiff sustained brain damage either through hypoxia or through the pounding of plaintiff's head against his mother's "pelvic rim" before birth.

Plaintiff also named Associated Physicians, P.C., the employer of Drs. Kittur and Gennaoui, under a theory of vicarious liability. In addition, plaintiff named Oakwood Hospital, where plaintiff was delivered, and named Henry Ford Hospital under a successor liability theory.¹¹

On January 21, 1997, defendant asked the Court to exclude the testimony of Dr. Ronald Gabriel, plaintiff's proposed causation expert, or, in the alternative, to conduct a Davis-Frye hearing.¹² This motion was denied.

Henry Ford filed a successful motion to sever. However, the trial court found after conducting a bench trial that Henry Ford was liable to plaintiff as a successor to Associated Physicians, P.C.

After the jury found in plaintiff's favor, the court entered judgment of $21 million, reflecting the present value of the $36 million awarded by the jury. The trial court denied defendants' motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial.

On February 1, 2002, the Court of Appeals affirmed the jury verdict in plaintiff's favor, but ordered remittitur because of the jury's overestimation of plaintiff's lost wage earning capacity.¹³ The panel also affirmed the trial court's conclusion that Henry Ford was liable to plaintif...