Moratzky v. Wirth

• Citation: 69 N.W. 480,67 Minn. 46
• Decision Date: 28 December 1896
• Docket Number: 10,180--(157)
• Parties: AMELIA MORATZKY v. CARL WIRTH
• Court: Minnesota Supreme Court

69 N.W. 480

67 Minn. 46

AMELIA MORATZKY v. CARL WIRTH

Nos. 10,180--(157)

Supreme Court of Minnesota

December 28, 1896

Appeal by plaintiff from an order of the district court for Ramsey county, Egan, J., denying a motion for a new trial. Reversed.

Order reversed, and a new trial granted.

N. B Ferguson, Norman Fetter, and James E. Trask, for appellant.

Humphrey Barton, for respondent.

OPINION

START C. J.

The defendant is a physician, and this action is brought to recover damages which the plaintiff claims that she sustained by his malpractice while attending her as her physician. At the close of the plaintiff's case, the trial court dismissed the action, and she appealed from an order denying her motion for a new trial.

We have reached the conclusion, after a careful consideration of the evidence, that the case should have been submitted to the jury. As there must be a new trial, we deem it advisable to refrain from any extended discussion of the evidence, lest we may thereby prejudice the prosecution or defense of the action on the new trial.

The claim of the plaintiff was, substantially, that on the night of October 29, 1891, she was delivered of a five-months old foetus, and that the defendant from this date until November 20, 1891, was her sole attending physician. On the morning after her delivery, the defendant removed the placenta, but as plaintiff claimed, he failed to remove the whole of it and negligently permitted a piece of it, one by two inches long and two-thirds of an inch thick, to remain, which putrefied, whereby blood poisoning and a septic condition of the plaintiff was produced, which greatly increased, intensified, and prolonged her ordinary illness; that the effect of the blood poisoning resulting from the decaying placenta in the body of the plaintiff was to permanently weaken and impair her physical condition, and to cause gangrene in her left leg, which was cut off to save her life. As to the physical condition of the plaintiff at the end of three weeks after her delivery, when another physician was called, there is no dispute. She was then in a very weak, depressed, and somewhat septic condition. Her leg was a blue black, swollen, and in a gangrene condition, and was cut off to save her life. The second physician, on his first visit to plaintiff, found and removed from the mouth of the womb a piece of afterbirth, of the size stated, which was then in a decayed...