Galloway v. Lawrence, 768
| Decision Date | 14 January 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 768,768 |
| Citation | 145 S.E.2d 861,266 N.C. 245 |
| Court | North Carolina Supreme Court |
| Parties | Laura Gene GALLOWAY, By her Next Friend Daniel J. Parks, v. Benjamin J. LAWRENCE, Jr. Lois GALLOWAY v. Benjamin J. LAWRENCE, Jr. |
White, Crumpler, Powell, Pfefferkorn & Green, Winston-Salem, for plaintiff appellants.
Woltz & Faw, Mount Airy, Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice, by I. E. Carlyle and H. Grady Barnhill, Jr., Winston-Salem, for defendant appellee.
The duty which a physician or surgeon owes his patient is determined by the contract by which his services are engaged. Nash v. Royster, 189 N.C. 408, 127 S.E. 356. Ordinarily, he is not an insurer of the success of his treatment of or operation upon the patient and, in the absence of proof of his negligence in the treatment of the patient, or of his failure to possess that degree of professional knowledge and skill ordinarily had by those who practice that branch of the medical art and science which he holds himself out to practice, he is not liable in damages even though the patient does not survive the treatment or emerges from it in worse condition than before. Hunt v. Bradshaw, 242 N.C. 517, 88 S.E.2d 762; Jackson v. Mountain Sanitarium 234 N.C. 222, 67 S.E.2d 57; Wilson v. Martin Memorial Hospital, 232 N.C. 362, 61 S.E.2d 102; Hardy v. Dahl, 210 N.C. 530, 187 S.E. 788; Nash v. Royster, supra.
In Hunt v. Bradshaw, supra, this Court, speaking through Higgins, J., said:
Thus, it is not enough to absolve a physician or surgeon from liability that he possess the requisite professional knowledge and skill. He must exercise reasonable diligence in the application of that knowledge and skill to the particular patient's case and give to that patient such attention as his case requires from time to time. Wilson v. Martin Memorial Hospital, supra; Groce v. Myers, 224 N.C. 165, 29 S.E.2d 553; Nash v. Royster, supra. In the case last cited, Stacy, C. J., said, for the Court:
'As a general rule, in the absence of any special agreement limiting the service, or reasonable notice to the patient, when a surgeon is employed to perform an operation, he must not only use reasonable and ordinary care, skill, and diligence in its performance, but, in the subsequent treatment of the case, he must also give, or see that the patient is given, such attention as the necessity of the case demands.'
The plaintiffs allege that in the treatment of this little girl the defendant did not use a proper and accepted method of treating such a fracture in so small a child and that, having placed her in Bryant's traction, he failed to give her proper care and attention, especially after he was informed by the nurses in charge that alarming symptoms, indicating serious complications, had appeared.
There was conflicting expert testimony as to whether the treatment used by the defendant in the case of this child was an accepted and approved method of treating such fracture.
The plaintiffs called as their witnesses the nurse, who, upon the night of 11-12 February 1962, was on duty and in charge of the hall of the hospital upon which the child's room was located, and the supervisor of nurses then on duty and in charge of nursing service throughout the hospital. They testified that at approximately 2 a. m. on 12 February 1962, at which time the child had been in traction four days, the hall nurse discovered that the child's feet were cool, discolored and swollen, these being indications of serious circulatory complications in a patient in Bryant's traction. Following a consultation between the hall nurse and the supervisor, the latter telephoned the defendant and reported these circumstances to him. The defendant, in the telephone conversation, instructed the supervisor to let the child's legs down and to start certain treatment. Neither the supervisor nor the hall nurse saw or had any further communication with the defendant during the remainder of the night. During the remainder of the night, the supervisor's duties required her to be in various places throughout the hospital and the hall nurse, with a number of patients under her care, had her station at some distance down the hall from this child's room and around a corner so that she could not see the door of the room. The child's room was at the head of a stairway, leading to the lower floor and thence to the emergency entrance to the hospital. The defendant testified that, after receiving the telephone call from the nurses, he went to the hospital, entered by the emergency entrance, went up the stairway and into the child's room, observed what had been done pursuant to his instructions given over the telephone, determined that there was nothing else to be done for the present but to await developments and then left the hospital without seeing either the hall nurse or the supervisor since he had nothing further to tell them. He saw no one else in the hospital, which is a relatively small one. The patient, being a four year old child, would not be a source of either corroboration or contradiction.
Dr. Howard H. Bradshaw, called as a witness by the defendant and qualified as an expert, testified, 'I believe the child had standard treatment.' This was in response to a hypothetical question by defendant's counsel, which question included, as one of the hypotheses, 'that immediately after the telephone conversation Dr. Lawrence went to the Northern Hospital of Surry County, entered the hospital through the emergency room door and went to Room 236; that he entered the...
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State v. Frazier
...than rulings upon the qualification of the witness to testify as to his opinion. This case is distinguishable from Galloway v. Lawrence, 266 N.C. 245, 145 S.E.2d 861. That was a suit against a surgeon for damages due to malpractice. The defendant, himself, was called to the stand as a witne......
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State v. McEachern
...questions which convey to the jury his opinion as to what has or has not been shown by the testimony of a witness. Galloway v. Lawrence, 266 N.C. 245, 145 S.E.2d 861; State v. Perry, 231 N.C. 467, 57 S.E.2d 774; State v. Cantrell, State v. Oakley, 210 N.C. 206, 186 S.E. 244, presents a situ......
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...of medical services, a duty arises requiring the physician to conform to the statutory standard of care. Galloway v. Lawrence, 266 N.C. 245, 247, 145 S.E.2d 861, 864 (1966) (duty physician owes patient determined by contract by which physician's services are engaged); Kennedy v. Parrott, 24......
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Marley v. Graper
...judge provided jury with extended review of defendant's contentions but failed to review plaintiffs' contentions); Galloway v. Lawrence, 266 N.C. 245, 145 S.E.2d 861 (1966) (finding error in trial court's statement in the presence of the jury that defendant physician was expert in surgery);......
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Why you should not judge a book by its cover: looking beyond party affiliations to discern patterns in judicial decisionmaking in the North Carolina Supreme Court: an analysis of voting trends in criminal and tort cases from 1995-2002.
...in part). (104) Id. (Mitchell, C.J., dissenting in part, concurring in part). (105) The majority relied on Galloway v. Lawrence, 145 S.E.2d 861 (N.C. 1966), in reaching their conclusion in Sherrod. Chief Justice Mitchell, though agreeing with the result in Galloway, disagreed with the major......