Gould v. Winokur, A--662

• Decision Date: 05 February 1969
• Docket Number: No. A--662,A--662
• Citation: 104 N.J.Super. 329,250 A.2d 38
• Parties: Elmer GOULD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gerald WINOKUR, Defendant-Respondent.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court — Appellate Division

Page 329

104 N.J.Super. 329

250 A.2d 38

Elmer GOULD, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Gerald WINOKUR, Defendant-Respondent.

No. A--662.

Superior Court of New Jersey

Appellate Division.

Argued Dec. 19, 1968.

Decided Feb. 5, 1969.

Seymour B. Jacobs, Newark, for appellant (Balk, Jacobs, Goldberger & Mandell, Newark, attorneys).

H. Curtis Meanor, Jersey City, for respondent (Lamb, Blake, Hutchinson & Dunne, Jersey City, attorneys).

Before Judges CONFORD, KILKENNY and LEONARD.

The opinion of the court was delivered

PER CURIAM.

This medical-surgical malpractice case was tried before a jury. The claim of negligent performance of the surgery was involuntarily dismissed, on defendant's motion, at the close of plaintiff's case. The issues of whether plaintiff had given his 'informed consent' to the operation and whether defendant failed to give proper pre-operative and post-operative care were submitted to the jury at the close of all the proofs. The jury returned a unanimous verdict in favor of defendant and against plaintiff of 'No cause for action.' The jury also answered specific interrogatories consistent with that general verdict.

Plaintiff's motion to set aside the verdict and grant a new trial was denied. Judge Pindar's reasons for denying that motion are fully set forth in his opinion reported in 98 N.J.Super. 554, 237 A.2d 916 (Law Div. 1968).

Plaintiff appeals from the whole of the judgment in favor of defendant and from the order denying the motion for a new trial.

We affirm the judgment in defendant's favor and the order denying a new trial substantially for the reasons expressed in Judge Pindar's opinion. We add the following supplementary comments.

There is a lack of evidence in the record that the eighth nerve was severed or traumatized by reason of some negligent or wrongful act on the part of defendant. There was no proof of a departure by defendant from the accepted practice in performing the operation in question. With respect to the surgery in question, only defendant testified. He verified that he had followed the required protective standards. He did not anticipate any involvement of the seventh and eighth nerves as the result of this surgery. These latter nerves were covered with very fine cottonoid strips to protect them from any damage. This was standard and proper practice. If there was any permissible inference of a causal connection between defendant's activity and any involvement of the seventh and eighth nerves, there is absent any reasonable basis for a conclusion that the manner of performance of the operation by defendant departed from accepted surgical standards or was otherwise below the level of reasonable care by a surgeon. To have submitted to the jury the issue of negligence in the performance of the surgery, without any better evidence than here advanced, would have allowed the jurors to embark on a sea of pure speculation. This was not the kind of a case where a jury, unaided by expert opinion, could have found negligence on defendant's part.

Plaintiff complains that the trial court should not have granted defendant's motion for an involuntary dismissal at the end of plaintiff'c case. He argues that the court should have waited to see whether defendant's own case might have supplied the deficiencies in plaintiff's proofs. Plaintiff took the deposition of defendant before trial and read portions of it in presenting his own case. A motion to dismiss at the end of plaintiff's case is proper procedure. R.R. 4:42--2(b). There is no absolute obligation on the part of the trial judge to withhold action on that motion in the hope that plaintiff's deficiencies in his proofs will be supplied by evidence adduced on behalf of defendant. The matter is committed to the discretion of the trial judge. We find no mistake in the exercise of that discretion in this case. That phase of the case having been closed out by the involuntary dismissal, the court properly denied further inquiry into it thereafter.

So, too, any reservation by plaintiff to cross-examine defendant when he would testify in his own defense as to the performance of the surgery fell with the involuntary dismissal of the claim of negligent performance of...