Kelly v. Chillag
| Decision Date | 26 July 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 11285.,11285. |
| Citation | 381 F.2d 344 |
| Parties | Mary M. KELLY and Leo Kelly, Appellants, v. Edwin CHILLAG and Holden Hospital, Inc., a corporation, Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Rudolph L. Di Trapano, Charleston, W. Va. (Thomas P. Maroney, and Di Trapano & Mitchell, on brief), for appellants.
Wilson Anderson, Charleston, W. Va. (Carl F. Stucky, Jr., and Steptoe & Johnson, Charleston, W. Va., on brief), for appellees.
Before HAYNSWORTH, Chief Judge, and BOREMAN and CRAVEN, Circuit Judges.
The plaintiff has appealed from a judgment entered in her favor in her action for malpractice against a surgeon. Her principal complaint is the withdrawal from the jury of the question of punitive damages.
However censurable the physician's lack of candor after the event, it cannot convert his act of simple negligence into one of such recklessness or wilfulness as to furnish a foundation for punitive damages.
Otherwise, we also find the court's submission of the case to the jury fair and in conformity with the governing law of West Virginia.
Affirmed.
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Veselenak v. Smith
...should not have been recoverable in this case. Defendant's argument proceeds along two lines. First, defendant cites Kelly v. Chillag, 381 F.2d 344 (CA 4, 1967), and Noe v. Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, 248 Or. 420, 435 P.2d 306 (1967), for the proposition that concealment of malpractice fro......