Metz v. Fairbury Hosp.
| Decision Date | 03 November 1983 |
| Docket Number | No. 4-82-0797,4-82-0797 |
| Citation | 118 Ill.App.3d 1093,455 N.E.2d 1096,74 Ill.Dec. 472 |
| Parties | , 74 Ill.Dec. 472 Rueben METZ, Plaintiff, v. FAIRBURY HOSPITAL, Nikhal Kothari, and Cesar Secoquian, Defendants. FAIRBURY HOSPITAL, a Corporation, Third-Party Plaintiff-Appellant, v. CARLE CLINIC ASSOCIATES, INC., a Corporation, Edwin H. Shuck III, Charles L. Lansford, and G. Bruce Thow, Third-Party Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Costigan & Wollrab, Bloomington, for third-party plaintiff-appellant.
Todd M. Tennant, Dobbins, Fraker, Tennant, Joy & Perlstein, Champaign, for third-party defendants-appellees.
This appeal involves the necessity and sufficiency of expert testimony on the breach of the applicable standard of care in a medical malpractice action. The trial court found that Fairbury Hospital, the third-party plaintiff, had failed to introduce the necessary evidence of a breach of the standard of care; therefore, the court directed verdicts in favor of the third-party defendants at the close of Fairbury Hospital's case-in-chief. Fairbury Hospital appeals that decision, and we affirm.
Rueben Metz was admitted to Fairbury Hospital March 25, 1979, for treatment of severe abdominal pain. Several days later, in greater pain, he was transferred at his request to Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana, where an exploratory laparotomy was performed five or six hours after his arrival. In the course of the operation a Foley catheter that had been inserted during Metz's stay at Fairbury Hospital was discovered to be out of its proper position: the end of the catheter and the inflatable balloon designed to hold it in place were in the patient's prostatic urethra rather than his bladder.
Metz sued Fairbury Hospital and the two doctors that had treated him there, Kothari and Secoquian, for negligence. Fairbury Hospital then filed a third-party complaint, the subject of this appeal, against Carle Clinic Associates, Inc., and the three doctors that had treated Metz there, Shuck, Lansford, and Thow. Fairbury Hospital alleged the third-party defendants' negligence and asked for contribution in the event of its own liability. Midway through trial, after Metz had completed his case-in-chief, he dismissed Kothari and Secoquian as defendants and settled with Fairbury Hospital for $25,000. The trial then continued on the third-party action. At the close of Fairbury Hospital's case-in-chief, the trial judge directed verdicts in favor of the third-party defendants ("the Carle doctors") because the hospital had failed to establish through expert testimony a breach of the relevant standard of care; the trial judge also rejected Fairbury Hospital's argument that expert testimony was unnecessary in this case.
The premise of Fairbury Hospital's third-party complaint is that the doctors at Carle misdiagnosed Metz's problem and performed an unnecessary operation: the difficulty caused by the catheter could have been discovered and solved without the laparotomy. Fairbury Hospital alleges that the unnecessary operation resulted in the main from the Carle doctors' negligent failure to request the records of Metz's fluid input and output while at Fairbury Hospital and from their negligent failure to test the placement of the catheter. Fairbury Hospital argues that those records or a simple manual test of the catheter's position would have disclosed the problem. The Carle doctors do not dispute that Metz's problem was incorrectly diagnosed, but they deny that they were negligent.
On appeal Fairbury Hospital argues that no expert testimony was needed to show the Carle doctors' negligence and alternatively that the testimony presented by it was sufficient to establish a breach of the applicable standard of care. These questions require us to summarize the evidence, which we shall do here briefly.
Rueben Metz, 75 years old at the time of trial in September 1982, entered Fairbury Hospital on Sunday, March 25, 1979, because he had been having severe cramps and pains in his abdomen for several days; urination had provided some relief at one point during that period. His doctor, Nikhal Kothari, believed that his diverticulitis was acting up. On March 27 the catheter was inserted after Metz complained of abdominal pain and an inability to urinate. The catheter did not help, and the pain in Metz's abdomen grew worse during the next few days.
Kothari did not suspect that Metz was retaining urine--he thought that Metz's fluid imbalance was a result of a diverticular abscess. Kothari believed that Metz required a colon resection, and Kothari's final diagnosis, made when Metz left Fairbury Hospital around noon on March 29, was possible diverticular abscess with possible enlarged prostate.
Dr. Lansford, a gastroenterologist at Carle, first saw Metz in 1974 and at that time diagnosed a spastic colon. Lansford saw Metz several times in 1975, and in March of that year diagnosed diverticulitis. Because it was not acute, Lansford treated Metz for a spastic colon.
Lansford saw Metz March 29, 1979, when Metz came to Carle from Fairbury Hospital. Lansford ordered X-rays and a blood count. Metz's abdomen was flat but contained a mass about 6 inches in diameter where his bladder was. After reviewing some records from Fairbury, the test results, and his physical examination of Metz, Lansford diagnosed an abdominal abscess requiring immediate surgery. Lansford did not test the Foley catheter for proper placement; the test is to push the catheter in and then pull it out, until resistance is met. Drs. Shuck and Thow performed an exploratory laparotomy that night, March 29, and found that the catheter was in Metz's prostatic urethra; they did a cystostomy and inserted another catheter to drain the distended bladder. The surgeons did not find diverticulitis or diverticulosis.
Lansford later reviewed the fluid input and output records from Fairbury; he did not have these when Metz was admitted to Carle. The catheter was inserted at 4:30 p.m. March 27, and the following nurses' shift, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., showed a urine flow of...
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