Frost v. Mayo Clinic

• Decision Date: 08 October 1969
• Docket Number: No. 1-66-Civ-4.,1-66-Civ-4.
• Citation: 304 F. Supp. 285
• Parties: Marion R. FROST and Robert G. Frost, Plaintiffs, v. MAYO CLINIC, Mayo Foundation, and Dr. George S. Baker, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota

304 F. Supp. 285

Marion R. FROST and Robert G. Frost, Plaintiffs, v. MAYO CLINIC, Mayo Foundation, and Dr. George S. Baker, Defendants.

No. 1-66-Civ-4.

United States District Court D. Minnesota, Third Division.

October 8, 1969.

Thomas F. Burns, St. Paul, Minn., for plaintiffs.

Henry Halladay, Minneapolis, Minn., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

DEVITT, Chief Judge.

In this medical malpractice case against the Mayo Clinic¹ brought by a former patient and her husband, the jury returned a plaintiffs' verdict for $50,000. Defendants move for Judgment N.O.V. or a new trial.

Plaintiff Marion R. Frost, a 46-year-old housewife from Elgin, Illinois, was bothered with low back problems for about ten years prior to August 6, 1962. She sought medical help at the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, Minnesota. The Clinic doctors diagnosed her case as one of a protruded intervertebral disc. Dr. George S. Baker, a Clinic neurosurgeon, performed surgery on August 16, 1962 and removed the disc. No complaint is made as to the performance of this operation.

Dr. Baker performed a second operation in the same surgical site two days later, at 10:15 a. m. on August 18, 1962 in response to the complaints of the patient and a showing of neurological deficits following the first operation. In the second operation the neurosurgeon was looking for a possible blood clot or hematoma. He did not find such. He did find some swelling of oxycel, which had been used as a coagulant at the time of the first surgery. He also found swelling of the cauda equina. He performed a decompression.

The patient did not experience a normal recovery. She is permanently partially paralyzed. She wears leg braces and suffers marked physical disabilities.

The issue at trial was as to the claimed negligence of the defendants in not determining the need for, and more promptly performing, the second surgical procedure and as to the causation between such claimed negligence and Mrs. Frost's subsequent physical disability.

The trial extended over 31 days. Forty-two witnesses testified, many of them medical doctors, nurses and nurses' aides. The plaintiffs sought to show that starting almost immediately after the first operation on August 16, the patient experienced inordinate pain and complained of such repeatedly; had marked neurological deficits such as numbness of the legs and inability to wiggle her toes and other signs of paralysis; and that the defendants were negligent in not more quickly intervening with a second surgical procedure to alleviate the pain and to stop the ascending paralysis; and that their failure to do so promptly was the cause of the permanent paralysis. Three medical doctors testified as experts in support of plaintiffs' theory of the case.

The defendants sought to show that some pain is common to all post-surgical patients; that some neurological deficits were normally to be expected for a time following a laminectomy; that the hospital records did not support many of Mrs. Frost's claims of complaint to the nurses and doctors; that it was risky and medically unwise to re-operate too soon after the first operation and until the medical facts would support such a judgment; and that the medical facts did not indicate the need for a second operation until August 18th. The defendants also sought to show that defendants' negligence, even if proved, was not a direct cause of Mrs. Frost's paralytic condition. Two medical experts, one a neurosurgeon, the other an orthopedic surgeon, together with several other doctors, some associated presently or in the past with the Mayo Clinic, testified in support of the defendants' theory of the defense.

The case was submitted on the issues of negligence and proximate cause and the jury returned a plaintiffs' verdict for $50,000.00.

Defendants' motion for Judgment N.O.V. is based on the ground that there was no competent evidence that defendants breached any applicable standard of care or that if they did, the conditions complained of were a direct result; and the motion for a new trial is based on the claimed incompetency of plaintiffs' medical witnesses and the impropriety of receiving their opinions in evidence.

The arguments in support of, and in opposition to, the motions are intertwined in the respective briefs of the parties and conveniently may be considered together.

The burden of defendants' argument is that the plaintiffs did not present competent expert medical testimony to support the claimed departure by the defendants from the recognized standard of medical care owed to Mrs. Frost.²

Plaintiffs presented three medical experts, each a medical doctor. None of them was a specialist in neurosurgery. One received his medical degree and training in England, another at the University of Arkansas, and the third at the University of Illinois. All are licensed practitioners. One of them, Dr. Harold S. Wandling of Los Angeles, California, is a specialist in general surgery. He had three years of post graduate training in surgery. He had assisted neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons in disc operations. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery and is a member of other professional...