Jackson v. Mercy Health Center, Inc.

• Decision Date: 30 November 1993
• Docket Number: No. 75759,75759
• Parties: Tim JACKSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MERCY HEALTH CENTER, INC., Defendant-Appellee.
• Court: Oklahoma Supreme Court

Page 839

864 P.2d 839

1993 OK 155

Tim JACKSON, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. MERCY HEALTH CENTER, INC., Defendant-Appellee.

No. 75759.

Supreme Court of Oklahoma.

Nov. 30, 1993.

On Certiorari to the Court of Appeals, Div. 4.

In an expectant father's action to recover for bodily harm suffered while he was watching hospital personnel prepare his

pregnant wife for Caesarean-section delivery, the District Court, Oklahoma County, Charles G. Humble, Judge, gave judgment to the defendant, holding that the Good Samaritan Act affords the hospital statutory immunity from liability in negligence. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded. We granted certiorari on the hospital's petition.

The Court of Appeals' Opinion is Vacated and the Trial Court's Judgment Reinstated and Affirmed.

Rex K. Travis, Oklahoma City, for appellant.

Charles F. Alden III, Elizabeth J. Dunning, Holloway, Dobson, Hudson & Bachman, Oklahoma City, for appellee.

OPALA, Justice.

The single issue on certiorari is whether the Good Samaritan ¹ Act, 76 O.S.1991 § 5, ² gives defendant Mercy Health Center, Inc. [the Hospital] statutory immunity from liability for its personnel's allegedly negligent attempt to render medical aid to plaintiff Tim Jackson, a hospital visitor. We answer in the affirmative.

I. THE ANATOMY OF LITIGATION

At the Hospital's invitation Tim Jackson [the visitor] accompanied his pregnant wife to the operating room to comfort her and to observe his baby's delivery by Caesarean section. ³ The visitor became dizzy while watching preparations for the surgical procedure. Hospital personnel came to his rescue by taking his arm and seating him upon his wife's hospital bed which had been left in the hallway outside the surgery room. After being seated but not secured he fell and injured himself. The visitor sued the Hospital for negligence, alleging that its personnel should have taken precautions to prevent his harm-dealing fall. The trial judge sustained the Hospital's demurrer, holding the defendant to be statutorily immune from liability for any negligence which might have resulted in the injurious fall. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded the case for trial; it reasoned that statutory immunity cannot shield the Hospital from liability because its visitor was not in danger of death or serious bodily harm when hospital personnel came to his aid. We granted certiorari on Hospital's petition.

II.

THE TRIAL COURT DID NOT ERR IN GIVING JUDGMENT TO THE

HOSPITAL ON SUSTAINING ITS DEMURRER TO THE EVIDENCE

The Hospital urges the Court of Appeals should have affirmed the trial court's decision that the Good Samaritan Act provides it with a shield from liability for negligence. ⁴ According to the visitor, the Court of Appeals' decision that the Hospital is not statutorily immune should be affirmed because he (a) had contracted to pay for the Hospital's services which were to be extended to his wife and baby and (b) was never in danger of death or serious bodily harm.

A demurrer to the evidence admits as true every fact favorable to the party against whom the demurrer is directed, together with all reasonable inferences which may be drawn from them. ⁵ Absent an entire want of proof to show any right of recovery, it is error to sustain the demurrer. ⁶ For our review we assume that the Hospital may have been negligent in failing to securely seat the visitor when he became dizzy. Measuring the visitor's proof by the applicable legal norms, we conclude that statutory immunity is a complete defense to his claim for negligence in rendering emergency medical aid.

III.

THE GOOD SAMARITAN ACT ABROGATES THE COMMON-LAW RESCUE

DOCTRINE FOR MEDICAL PROVIDERS

At common law no duty is imposed to rescue a person who is in peril, absent some relationship between the parties that creates a special responsibility ⁷ not owed to the general public. ⁸ If one voluntarily undertakes to rescue a stranger, the rescuer is liable for physical harm that results from failure to exercise reasonable care. ⁹

Oklahoma adopted the Good Samaritan Act, ¹⁰ 76 O.S.1991 § 5, ¹¹ in 1963. It abrogates the common-law rescue doctrine for medical providers in an effort to encourage them to risk helping strangers in need of succor, even when they have no duty to render aid. ¹² Good Samaritan immunity rests on three elements: (1) the absence of a prior contractual relationship between the rescuer and the injured person, (2) the characterization of the rescuer's act as having been done in good faith, voluntarily and without compensation and (3) the injured person's apparent need of emergency medical aid. ¹³ Rescue is not limited to any situs; it can take place "wherever required." ¹⁴ Gross negligence or willful or wanton acts are excluded from statutory protection. ¹⁵

As for the Act's applicability, two issues are in dispute: (a) whether the visitor had a prior contractual relationship with the Hospital, which would take him out of the Act's purview, and if not, (b) whether his dizziness created an emergency within the meaning of the Act. ¹⁶

IV.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HOSPITAL AND VISITOR WAS THAT OF

INVITOR/VISITOR, RATHER THAN THAT OF HOSPITAL/PATIENT; NO

PRIOR CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE TWO PARTIES DEPRIVES

THE HOSPITAL OF ITS GOOD SAMARITAN DEFENSE

The Good Samaritan Act's [the Act's] immunity, of course, does not apply in the context of a hospital/patient relationship. ¹⁷ Stated another way, no hospital is ever a Good Samaritan vis-a-vis its own patient. The statutory immunity stands extended whenever a contractual stranger --such as a visitor, whether an invitee, licensee, or trespasser--is assisted in an emergency. ¹⁸

The visitor urges that the childbirth class he attended, and his agreement to pay his wife's hospital expenses with those of his child, transformed his status vis-a-vis the Hospital from one of invitor/visitor to that of hospital/patient. According to the visitor, any contract he may have had with the Hospital--even if no hospital/patient relationship was created--took the medical provider out of the Act's ambit and imposed upon it a duty actively to render care when he became dizzy in the operating room.

Appellate analysis of a demurrer's sustention requires that the record be viewed in the light most favorable to the visitor. He had attended a one-hour class at the Hospital during which he was shown a film depicting a Caesarean-section delivery. After the movie, he and his wife were given a tour of the Hospital's labor and delivery area and of its surgery facilities. He had agreed to pay for hospital services to be performed for his wife and child but not for him. We hence conclude that his status was that of a visitor. The record before us shows no relationship between the Hospital and the visitor--contractual, status-based, or otherwise--which would confer on the latter the status of a patient and make the statutory Good Samaritan immunity inapposite.

V.

THE HOSPITAL'S RESPONSE TO ITS VISITOR'S DIZZINESS FALLS

WITHIN THE SWEEP OF THE ACT'S IMMUNITY

The visitor would have us give the Act a highly technical construction. It would limit the Act's ambit to situations where it is crystal clear to the medical provider--at the critical moment when a decision must be made whether to render immediate aid--that failure to act will inevitably result in death or serious bodily harm to the stranger. The primary goal of statutory construction is to determine legislative intent. ¹⁹ This must be ascertained from the statute's language in light of its general purpose and object. ²⁰ Statutory construction that would lead to an absurdity will be avoided if this can be done without contravening the legislative intent. ²¹ A reasonable and rational construction is preferred. ²²

The legislature has afforded immunity from liability for negligence to all those health care providers who, while not contractually bound to assist an injured person, render, or attempt to render, care in good faith whenever someone appears to be in need of immediate medical attention. ²³ The legislature has obviously balanced a victim's need to be compensated for bodily harm inflicted by another's negligent rescue attempt against the public interest in encouraging medical providers to render aid in settings in which they might otherwise not feel safe to act. In the legislative judgment, providing an incentive for medical intervention in an emergency doubtless became a much higher priority than that of an injured person's competing interest in compensation. Our reading of the text must be both mindful of and faithful to this goal.

Keeping in mind that the Act's purpose is to invite medical providers to intervene, the term "emergency" must be given the broadest sense possible. The threat of a malpractice suit for one's failure correctly to diagnose the seriousness of potential harm to a stranger--based upon a gauge of perfect hindsight--would seriously undercut, if not indeed destroy, the immunity's effectiveness. Within the Act's intended meaning an emergency occurs whenever a stranger appears (or may be perceived) to be ill or in need of succor.

The visitor's dizziness occurred in the operating room; he was holding his wife's hand while she was being anesthetized for surgery. The testimony of a nurse who was an expert witness for the visitor, if taken as true, does not elevate the presence of emergency to a disputed fact issue. ²⁴ The medical provider need not have waited before rendering aid to see if the visitor would suffer total collapse. The Hospital was clearly within the Act's protection when its personnel escorted the visitor out of the surgery area, seated him on the bed in the hallway, and then redirected their attention to the wife.

SUMMARY

The trial court did not err by giving judgment to the Hospital upon sustaining its demurrer to the visitor's evidence. The visitor had no prior contractual relationship with the Hospital which would make him a patient and thus...