Holtzman v. Hoy
| Decision Date | 13 November 1886 |
| Citation | 118 Ill. 534,8 N.E. 832 |
| Parties | HOLTZMAN v. HOY. |
| Court | Illinois Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Error to appellate court, Second district.
Trespass on the case.
Stevenson & Ewing, for plaintiff in error.
Strawn & Patton, for defendant in error.
The present writ of error brings before us for review a judgment of the appellate court for the Second district, affirming a judgment of the circuit court of Livingston county in favor of Joseph Hoy, the defendant in error, and against Samuel E. Holtzman, the plaintiff in error, for the sum of $2,500. The action in form was trespass on the case, and the cause of action was alleged negligence and unskillfulness on the part of the defendant, as a physician and surgeon, in the treatment of the plaintiff's leg for a serious and complicated fracture. The case is submitted here on the briefs and arguments filed in the appellate court; and, as it most usually happens when this course is pursued, they are in the main occupied with a discussion of controverted questions of fact, a matter with which we have no concern. The case, so far as it is open to review here, is brought within a very narrow compass, and may be disposed of in a few words.
On the trial below the court refused to permit Dr. Gaylord, one of the defendant's witnesses, to answer the following question:‘I will ask you what his [Dr. Holtzman's] reputation is in the community, and among the profession, as being an ordinarily skillful and learned physician?’ And the court's action in disallowing the question is assigned for error. Waiving the formal objections to this question, which are apparent, we have no doubt of the correctness of the ruling of the court upon it. The duty which the defendant, as a physician and surgeon, owed the plaintiff was to bring to the case in hand that degree of knowledge, skill, and care which a good physician and surgeon would bring to a similar case under like circumstances. While this rule, on the one hand, does not exact the highest degree of skill and proficiency attainable in the profession, it does not, on the other hand, contemplate merely average merit. In other words, in order to determine who will come up to the legal standard indicated, we are not permitted to aggregate into a common class the quacks, the young men who have had no practice, the old ones who have dropped out of the practice, the good, and the very best, and then strike an average between them. This method would evidently place the standard too low. As a physician or surgeon cannot bring the requisite skill to any case unless he has it, it follows the professional skill of the defendant was, if not in express terms, at least by implication, put in issue in this case, and the onus probandi was upon the plaintiff to show his want of such skill. The proper and only mode of doing this was by proving that he did not exercise it in the treatment of the...
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Bosler v. Coble
...plaintiff by vague generalities, where specific facts and acts only were issuable. Such evidence alone is ground for reversal. (Holtzman v. Hay, 118 Ill. 534; Stevenson v. Gelsthorpe, 10 Mont. Among the other incompetent or irrelevant matters admitted were the notes sued upon. No issue was ......
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Hudson v. Weiland
... ... his treatment in the particular instance was proper, he could ... not be held liable for the want of such skill which resulted ... in no injury to the patient. Bute v. [150 Fla. 541] ... Potts, 76 Cal. 304, 18 P. 329; Holtzman v ... Hay, 118 Ill. 534, 8 N.E. 832, 59 Am.Rep. 390.' ... Spearman & ... Redfield on the law of Negligence, Vol. 3, 6th Ed., pages ... 1629, 1630, par. 614A, say: ... '* * * A ... physician who by negligence in diagnosis pronounces a man ... afflicted with a loathsome disease ... ...
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Borowski v. Von Solbrig
...Illinois was established as early as 1886, and the formulation of this duty has remained basically unchanged to date. In Holtzman v. Hoy (1886), 118 Ill. 534, 8 N.E. 832, the court said: 'The duty which the defendant, as a physician and surgeon, owed to the plaintiff, was to bring to the ca......
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Hinson v. Clairemont Community Hospital
...to an action brought for the injury sustained, and its admission would be clearly calculated to mislead the jury." (Holtman v. Hoy (1886) 8 N.E. 832, 833, 118 Ill. 534.) A South Carolina court similarly observed in a medical malpractice " 'Defendant's reputation as a physician was not in is......