Mariner Health Care v. Estate of Edwards

• Citation: 964 So.2d 1138
• Decision Date: 13 September 2007
• Docket Number: No. 2004-CA-01478-SCT.,2004-CA-01478-SCT.
• Parties: MARINER HEALTH CARE, INC.; Grancare, Inc.; Evergreen Healthcare, Inc.; National Heritage Realty, Inc.; George D. Morgan; M. Scott Athans; J.D. Lee; Charlie R. Sinclair, Jr.; Angela M. Whittington; and John H. Merrell v. ESTATE OF Charles E. EDWARDS, by and through Nevonnia TURNER, Administratrix of the Estate of Charles E. Edwards, for the use and benefit of the Estate of Charles E. Edwards, and for the use and benefit of the Wrongful Death Beneficiaries of Charles E. Edwards, Deceased.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Mississippi

964 So.2d 1138

MARINER HEALTH CARE, INC.; Grancare, Inc.; Evergreen Healthcare, Inc.; National Heritage Realty, Inc.; George D. Morgan; M. Scott Athans; J.D. Lee; Charlie R. Sinclair, Jr.; Angela M. Whittington; and John H. Merrell v. ESTATE OF Charles E. EDWARDS, by and through Nevonnia TURNER, Administratrix of the Estate of Charles E. Edwards, for the use and benefit of the Estate of Charles E. Edwards, and for the use and benefit of the Wrongful Death Beneficiaries of Charles E. Edwards, Deceased.

No. 2004-CA-01478-SCT.

Supreme Court of Mississippi.

September 13, 2007.

William W. McKinley, Jr., Jackson, Lorraine Boykin, attorneys for appellants.

D. Bryant Chaffin, Hattiesburg, Susan Nichols Estes, Kenneth L. Connor, attorneys for appellee.

EN BANC.

WALLER, Presiding Justice, for the Court.

¶ 1. The present case concerns a wrongful death claim against a nursing home and its parent companies. We find that the failure to investigate alleged juror misconduct, the admission of improper evidence, and the failure to distinguish among defendants compel us to reverse the judgment for the Plaintiff and remand the case for further proceedings.

FACTS

¶ 2. Charles Edwards was admitted to the Greenwood Health and Rehabilitation Center on December 27, 1994. He was forty years old, and due to childhood brain damage was severely mentally retarded and suffered from severe autism, grand mal seizure disorder, and a swallowing disorder that had led to chronic pneumonia. He had an estimated I.Q. of 13 and a mental age of two years and three months. He could not speak and had never attended school. Throughout most of his life, he was able to feed himself, walk and run, and use the toilet without assistance. However, prior to his admittance to Greenwood Health, his health had deteriorated, he had difficulty walking, and he was increasingly unresponsive to family members.

¶ 3. In October 1996, Greenwood Health recommended that Edwards have a PEG feeding tube inserted into his stomach, because he was refusing food orally and had lost significant weight. Though Edwards's family initially refused to authorize the insertion of the feeding tube, by April 1997 they had accepted the necessity of the procedure. Initially, Edwards responded well to PEG feeding, but by October 1998, his body had stopped processing the nutrients delivered through the tube. Between April 1999 and June 1999, Edwards was hospitalized for gastrointestinal bleeding, and by August 1999 had lost twenty-two pounds. Edwards's condition deteriorated steadily. From May 2001 until February 2002, Edwards spent 188 days in the Greenwood-Leflore Hospital. Intravenous feeding was not ordered until Edwards's final hospitalization on February 2, 2002. Edwards died on February 16, 2002, from cardiac arrest caused by pneumonia, which was in turn the result of volume depletion, a condition caused by a lack of liquid in the body's cells.

¶ 4. On December 7, 2001, Edwards's family brought suit for compensatory and punitive damages against National Heritage Realty, the owner of Greenwood Health, its parent companies, Grancare, Inc., Evergreen Healthcare, and Mariner Healthcare, Inc., and against five individuals in their capacities as administrators or licensees of Greenwood Health.¹ The complaint alleged negligence, medical malpractice gross negligence, fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty. After Edwards's death, the family amended its complaint to include a claim for wrongful death. The trial began on December 8, 2003. The jury found each of the defendants liable for Edwards's death, and awarded $1.5 million in compensation. Subsequently, the trial judge determined that the jury should be allowed to consider punitive damages, and, after considering the evidence, the jury awarded $5 million in punitive damages. Mariner raises eleven issues on appeal, which we have consolidated into seven.

DISCUSSION

I. DENIAL OF JUDGMENT NOTWITHSTANDING THE VERDICT

¶ 5. Greenwood Health first argues that the trial court erred in denying its motion for Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict (JNOV). Mariner contends that Edwards's estate failed to present a prima facie case for liability because the Estate's expert, Dr. Kenneth Olson, did not establish that the negligence of the nursing home was the proximate cause of Edwards's death.

¶ 6. This Court reviews the grant or denial of a motion for directed verdict de novo, and will consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the appellee, giving that party the benefit of all favorable inferences that may reasonably be drawn from the evidence. Whitten v. Cox, 799 So.2d 1, 7 (Miss.2000). So long as substantial evidence supports the verdict, that is, evidence of such quality and weight that reasonable and fair-minded jurors in the exercise of impartial judgment might have reached different conclusions, then this Court will affirm. Id.

¶ 7. In determining whether the negligence of a party caused a plaintiff's injuries, this Court has held that:

That negligence which merely furnished the condition or occasion upon which injuries are received, but does not put in motion the agency by or through which the injuries are inflicted, is not the proximate cause thereof. However, if an antecedent negligent act puts in motion an agency which continues in operation until an injury occurs it would appear to be more like a second proximate cause than a remote and unactionable cause.

Eckman v. Moore, 876 So.2d 975, 981-82 (Miss.2004) (citations omitted) (emphasis added).

¶ 8. In cases alleging that death was caused by the negligence of a health care provider, proximate cause must be established by a medical doctor. Richardson v. Methodist Hosp. of Hattiesburg, Inc., 807 So.2d 1244, 1248 (Miss.2002). This Court does not require that expert testimony conclusively establish the cause of death. Blake v. Clein, 903 So.2d 710, 731-32 (Miss.2005); Stratton v. Webb, 513 So.2d 587, 590 (Miss.1987). However, expert testimony must, at a minimum, show that deviations from the standard of nursing care caused or contributed to the decedent's death. Richardson, 807 So.2d at 1248.

¶ 9. Dr. Kenneth Olson testified that Greenwood Health breached the standard of care in failing to monitor Edwards's nutritional needs and bowel movements, in failing to recommend intravenous feeding, known as "TPN feeding," to the center's medical director, and in not recommending that Edwards be transferred to a multiple-specialty facility to address his worsening condition. He further opined that the failure of the nursing home to recommend the TPN treatment was a contributing cause of Edwards's death.

¶ 10. Dr. Olson's testimony did not conclusively establish the liability of the nursing home. He admitted that, in his deposition prior to trial, he stated that the nursing home did not breach the standard of care in its feeding program. He admitted that from 1999 until his death in 2002, Edwards was spending increasing amounts of time in the Greenwood-Leflore Hospital, and that half of all hospital patients are malnourished because of their treatment. Finally, he admitted that no doctor at Greenwood-Leflore ordered TPN treatment until 2002, despite the fact that the hospital staff had ample time to determine whether such a procedure was necessary.

¶ 11. Considered as a whole, Dr. Olson's testimony was sufficient to present a prima facie case for the liability of Greenwood Health. He testified to a causal nexus between the actions of Greenwood Health and Edwards's death. While he did not rule out the possibility that other parties were liable, his testimony that the negligence of Greenwood Health contributed to Edwards's death is sufficient to establish proximate cause. Viewed in the light most favorable to Edwards's estate, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. This assignment of error is therefore without merit.

II. DENIAL OF MOTION TO CONTACT JURORS REGARDING ALLEGED JUROR MISCONDUCT

¶ 12. On December 27, 2002, after the jury rendered a verdict for Edwards's estate, Mariner was contacted by one of the jurors, Juror "B," who alleged that another juror, Juror "W," had made prejudicial statements during the trial and in jury deliberations. Juror B alleged in an affidavit that Juror W, on the first day of trial, said that "she had made up her mind in favor of the plaintiff; that she could not wait to give money to the plaintiff; and that there was nothing anyone could say that could change her mind." The affidavit alleged several other statements, including: (1) that Juror W knew a resident at Greenwood Health, who to the affiant's best recollection was Juror W's relative; (2) that she had personally witnessed this resident lying in her own waste and receiving poor care, and that because that resident had received poor care, Edwards must also have received poor care; and (3) that Juror W saw other residents unknown to her receive poor care when she visited the nursing home. Furthermore, the affiant referred to general comments by jury members that "white people have been taking black people's money and black people have figured out that lawsuits are the way to get the money back," and that "jurors needed to stick together to get the money back to black people and that money should be given in this case because the plaintiff was black."² The affidavit did not precisely clarify which jurors made these statements. Such remarks are attributed to "juror comments" and were apparently made by multiple jurors. The affidavit implicitly included Juror W among those who made such statements. Nevertheless, even if Juror W never made these comments, the other statements that were directly attributed to Juror W are material to the issue at hand.

¶ 13. Relying on this affidavit, Mariner moved to contact additional jurors and to stay the judgment until an inquiry had been conducted. The trial court ruled that the...