Norwood Hospital v. Brown

• Decision Date: 09 May 1929
• Docket Number: 6 Div. 186.
• Parties: NORWOOD HOSPITAL v. BROWN.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

122 So. 411

219 Ala. 445

NORWOOD HOSPITAL v. BROWN.

6 Div. 186.

Supreme Court of Alabama

May 9, 1929

Rehearing Denied May 30, 1929.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County; Richard V. Evans Judge.

Action for damages by Ollie Mae Brown against the Norwood Hospital. Judgment for plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Stokely Scrivner, Dominick & Smith, of Birmingham, for appellant.

Wilkinson & Burton and Hollis O. Black, all of Birmingham, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

Plaintiff (appellee) complained of defendant that while she was a patient in the latter's hospital her arm had been burned by the application of hot water bottles, causing permanent and disfiguring injury. The main question on this appeal is raised by defendant's contention that it should have had the general charge requested in writing.

The argument for error in the matter of the charge refused in the trial court is rested upon two grounds: (1) That plaintiff was not burned; her injury resulted from the necessary and proper treatment given her by her attending surgeon; (2) that, if she was burned, it resulted from the negligence of a special nurse who was not the servant or agent of defendant-was an independent contractor.

1. The record has been carefully searched. Expert medical testimony was that plaintiff's injury complained of was the natural and unavoidable result of the treatment for the wound (that is, ligating the severed artery) on account of which she sought relief at defendant's hospital. Plaintiff had been wounded by a pistol shot which passed through her left shoulder, severing the subclavian artery, thereby largely cutting off the circulation in her left arm, and the medical men who testified in the case were of opinion that the decay and sloughing away of some of the flesh was due to interruption of the circulation, resulting in dry gangrene and not to burns. If we were in position to pronounce with finality upon the issue thus presented, we would feel inclined to decide the question in agreement with the judgment of the medical witnesses as being by far the most reliable in the premises. But, according to the law of this court, adopted long before our time and consistently followed (Orman v. Scharnagel, 210 Ala. 381, 98 So. 123, and authorities there cited), a scintilla of evidence going to support plaintiff's contention as to the cause of her injury made it necessary to refer the issue of fact thus raised to the jury for decision, in the first place at least. As the case is now presented, we are unable to hold that the statements of plaintiff and her witnesses to the effect that her injury in the beginning had the appearance of a burn or burns, that is, of blisters made by burns, and...