Mella v. Northern S.S. Co.

• Decision Date: 08 June 1908
• Citation: 162 F. 499
• Parties: MELLA v. NORTHERN S.S. CO.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York

162 F. 499

MELLA v. NORTHERN S.S. CO.

United States Circuit Court, S.D. New York.

June 8, 1908

This action is brought by the administratrix of Louis Mella deceased, against the Northern Steamship Company, under the provisions of section 1902 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the state of New York, for the benefit of the decedent's wife and next of kin, and to recover damages for the alleged negligence of the defendant, by which it is claimed the decedent's death was caused. The defendant denied negligence, and also denied that the death of the decedent Louis Mella, was caused by the alleged negligence, even if there was negligence, and gave evidence tending to show that such death was caused by the independent negligence of the physician and attendants at the hospital to which Mella was taken for treatment, or an operation, after the accident occurred.

Rounds & Dillingham, for plaintiff.

Breed Abbott & Morgan, for defendant.

RAY District Judge.

The section of the Code under which this action is brought reads as follows:

'Action for Death by Negligence. The executor or administrator of a decedent, who has left him or her surviving, a husband, wife, or next of kin, may maintain an action to recover damages for a wrongful act, neglect or default, by which the decedent's death was caused, against a natural person who, or a corporation which, would have been liable to an action in favor of the decedent, by reason thereof, if death had not ensued. Such an action must be commenced within two years after the decedent's death. ' Code Civ. Proc. N.Y. Sec. 1902.

The defendant owned the steamship Northwest, running on the Great Lakes; but, as the season had not opened on the 11th day of June, 1902, she lay at the wharf in Buffalo undergoing extensive repairs. These repairs had been going on for some time and included, among other things, a change of boilers, the cutting of a hole through the main deck for passage below, the putting up of railings and certain changes in and about the culinary department, which last changes were being made at the request of Mella and to some extent under his direction. As Mella was passing along the main deck through a passage, he turned into a narrow and shorter passage on his way to this culinary department and stepped one leg into a hole.

He either fell upon his left hand or elbow, or saved himself by reaching out his left hand; but, as he was a heavy man, the force of the fall was such that his left shoulder was dislocated. This was the only injury received, and the evidence was uncontradicted that this was the simplest and least complicated of the various forms of shoulder dislocations. The plaintiff alleges negligence, in that the defendant failed to furnish a safe place for Mella to work and had this hole in the short passageway mentioned unguarded, and that such passageway was insufficiently lighted.

Mella was taken to the Emergency Hospital in Buffalo, or went there of his own motion, to have the dislocation reduced. He was a large, heavy man, and some one in attendance gave him chloroform, which it is claimed reduced him to a state of coma. The dislocation was then reduced without difficulty, but Mella died under the influence of the chloroform and, as the physicians say, from paralysis of the heart caused by the chloroform. The defendant insisted and gave evidence tending to show: First, that the giving of the chloroform was unnecessary; and, second, that Mella was so negligently cared for while under its influence, no efforts being made to watch and bring him out from under its influence, that he died solely from the unnecessary administration of chloroform and the negligence of the surgeons and attendants having him in charge. The evidence was substantially undisputed that the injury and dislocation were not fatal and would not have been fatal had the patient been left entirely alone with the dislocation unreduced; that the only result would have been a partially disabled condition of the left arm.

The court charged the jury that, to enable plaintiff to recover, the jury must find that the defendant was negligent, that this negligence produced injury to Mella, and that such injury was the proximate cause of his death; also, that death must have been the natural and probable consequence of the injury or accident, and that Mella must have been free from contributory negligence which in any way and to any extent contributed to the injury, if it produced death.

The court also charged that the jury must find:

'That the cause of Mella's death was the injury so affecting his general physical condition and that of his heart, or both, that the chloroform caused death; that is, the injury caused the condition of the heart, etc., that resulted in death from the administration of chloroform.'

The court also charged that, if Mella died from paralysis of the heart caused by the chloroform unnecessarily given by the surgeons at the Emergency Hospital, and that paralysis of the heart resulted solely from a diseased condition of the heart and system existing at a time prior to and at the time of the accident, then the accident and injury were not the proximate cause of death, and the plaintiff cannot recover.

The court also charged we cannot trace death to the accident and resulting injury as the proximate cause of such death, if the prior physical conditions, including the conditions of the heart, were such, immediately prior to the injury, that the said unnecessary administering and effects of the anaesthetic, chloroform, would have caused the death and did cause the death of Mella unaided by the injury or its effects.

That is, if the injury had nothing to do with creating or causing or producing the physical condition that caused the chloroform to produce death. That is, if, owing to the prior physical condition of Mella-- and it was in no way aggravated by the accident and injury-- the chloroform so given solely caused the death, then death was not the result of the injury in any degree, and the accident and injury were not the proximate cause of death and plaintiff cannot recover.

The court also charged that the negligence must have caused death or must have aided to cause death. It is not sufficient that the negligence produced a condition not fatal which set other independent agencies at work, one of which, acting independently of the injury and accident, and acting alone, caused death. That is, it is not sufficient that negligence caused an injury not fatal; that this caused Mella to go to the hospital; that the injury caused the surgeon to operate and give chloroform; that the chloroform alone killed or caused death. The injury itself must, in whole or in part, have produced a physical condition which enabled the chloroform unnecessarily given to cause the death.

The court also charged the 'proximate cause' of death was that cause which in natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any new cause, produced death, and without which cause that death would not have occurred. Hence, if the pre-existing physical conditions of Mella were such that such giving of chloroform and its effects were alone sufficient to cause death and did cause death, and the accident and injury had nothing to do with producing the physical conditions upon which the chloroform operated or acted in producing death, then the accident and injury were not the cause of death, but the act of another person, or the acts of third persons in giving chloroform was. 'Death, in this case, cannot be attributed to the accident and injury, unless you find on the evidence in the case that without their operation on Mella's physical condition death would not have happened. ' The court also said there must be a fair preponderance of evidence to the effect that the death of the deceased, Mella, was caused by a physical condition produced in whole or in part by the injury and without the existence of which physical condition Mella would not have died. This charge is challenged, and the plaintiff insists that if the defendant was negligent, and that negligence caused injury to Mella, and he went to the hospital for treatment and submitted to a necessary operation, and the surgeons and attendants in charge unnecessarily gave chloroform, which, operating on Mella's physical condition as it was prior to the injury, caused death, such injury was the proximate cause of such death, and that plaintiff may recover.

The court more than once charged that negligent or careless treatment by the physicians and surgeons would not defeat recovery, but also charged, in substance, that if the chloroform was unnecessarily given, and the surgeons and attendants failed and neglected to properly care for Mella and watch him and use precautions to bring him out from under its effect, and in consequence of the giving of such chloroform and negligent treatment and want of care while under its influence solely he died, then the injury was not the proximate cause of death; but the unnecessary giving of chloroform and the negligence of the physicians and surgeons was.

In substance, the court charged that in such event death so caused was not the natural or probable consequence of the injury.

The court also charged:

'So if death was caused solely by the chloroform so given, and the physical conditions of Mella, entirely irrespective of the accident and injury, were such that the chloroform caused death, so that the injury or its effects were in no way or to any extent a producing cause of death, plaintiff cannot recover. It is not sufficient that the accident and injury made proper treatment necessary. That would be a remote cause, but not, in the case stated, the proximate cause, and for such remote cause the defendant is not...