Parrish v. Clark

• Decision Date: 09 January 1933
• Parties: PARRISH v. CLARK et ux.
• Court: Florida Supreme Court

145 So. 848

107 Fla. 598

PARRISH v. CLARK et ux.

Florida Supreme Court

January 9, 1933

Rehearing Denied Feb. 6, 1933.

Error to Circuit Court, Dade County; Worth W. Trammell, Judge.

Action by Oscar Clark and Mary Lee Clark, by her husband and next friend, Oscar Clark, against Mary E. Parrish, a feme sole operating and doing business under the name of Victoria Hospital. Judgment for plaintiffs, and defendant brings error.

Affirmed.

BROWN J., dissenting.

COUNSEL

Blackwell & Gray, of Miami, for plaintiff in error.

Dunbar H. Johnson, Jr., of Miami, for defendants in error.

OPINION

PER CURIAM.

This is a writ of error taken to a judgment at law awarding plaintiff below damages for injuries alleged to have been negligently inflicted upon her in defendant's hospital.

The declaration sounded both in tort and contract, but the nature of the action is largely immaterial on the question of whether or not the judgment should be reversed on the sole ground that liability is not shown by the evidence.

The gist of the cause of action was the asserted right to recover damages for personal injuries from the operator and proprietor of the Victoria Hospital at Miami, the allegations of the complaint being the general effect that the injuries sustained were caused by positive acts of negligence of a servant and employee of the hospital, in that said servant and employee, a nurse in the institution, improperly negligently, and carelessly undertook to administer and did administer to Mrs. Mary Lee Clark, after she had been operated on for appendicitis, a certain injection designated in the nomenclature of the medicial profession as a 'hypodermoclysis.'

The evidence offered in support of the complaint was substantial in character. It shows that the defendant, Mary E. Parrish was operating the Victoria Hospital; that with respect to plaintiff in error, if not with respect to the public generally, that she had assumed the status of one who undertook, for a reasonable compensation, to properly care for and nurse Mrs. Clark during the course of an operation and convalescence for appendicitis; that Mrs. Clark entered defendant's hospital for the purpose of such operation and that she was at the time, with the exception of having an attack of appendicitis, a strong, robust, healthy young married woman of twenty-three years of age; that as a result of the handling and care she received in the hospital while under the care of one of the reqularly employed nurses of the defendant hospital owner, that Mrs. Clark suffered personal injuries from an improperly prepared or administered saline solution which was injected into her breasts while she was unconscious and under the nurse's and hospital's care; that as a result plaintiff in the court below sustained personal injuries consisting of the destruction of the tissues of her breast by burning and breaking down of same, from which she suffered intense and excruciating pain and was rendered permanently impaired in her health and condition of her body.

The evidence further shows that all the personal injuries that plaintiff suffered, were directly and proximately attributable to the effects of the 'hypodermoclysis' which was actually administered to her by a Mrs. Leola Phillips Smith, a trained nurse who was at the time in the service and employ of the defendant, and whose duty it was to see after and care for the unconscious partient then under the care of Victoria Hospital, whose proprietor and operator the defendant, Mary E. Parrish, was.

The evidence is also to the effect that the administration of an 'hypodermoclysis' requires constant observation and skilled attention on the part of the one giving or administering it, in order to prevent injury to the patient.

This is especially true in cases where such 'hypodermoclysis' is administed to a patient who is unconscious from the effects of an anaesthetic administered to her during the course of an operation. For the foregoing reasons the hypodermic needles used in making the saline injection into the body to prevent dehydration in the tissues are usually handled either by or under the direct supervision, observation, and direction of a physician or surgeon.

It appears further that Mrs. Leola Phillips Smith, the Victoria Hospital nurse in charge of the patient involved in this case, undertook to give and did give the 'hypodermoclysis' herself, and that it was she who personally injected into the breasts of Mrs. Clark the hypodermic needles with which the particular injection was required to be made.

Whether or not this undertaking by the nurse, to do an act which it is contended only the physician himself should have performed, was negligence on her part, or imputable to the hospital which employed her to care for the unconscious patient then in her care, is not necessary to be decided in this case. Plaintiff's recovery does not depend upon a holding by this court that such an act was negligence either per se, or otherwise.

The facts are that the nurse, after beginning the 'hypodermoclysis' and before it had progressed very far, admits in her testimony that she noticed that ill effects were being wrought upon Mrs. Clark's breasts by the treatment as she was giving it, and that the tissues were not properly absorbing the solution being injected, and that notwithstanding these signs of danger, she continued making the injection until she had put into the breasts of her unconscious patient about six hundred and fifty CC's of the solution, whereas she noticed the first ill effect of the injections before she had given over fifty CC's of it.

The nurse who did this appeared as a witness and testified for the defendant below, and her own admissions are all in the record to the effect that after noting signs of danger caused by the treatment she was giving, she did not desist, neither did she call in the doctor in charge or any other doctor to advise her what was wrong or to direct her how to further administer the treatment.

At the time all this happened, Mrs. Smith was in the service of the Victoria Hospital and in the employ of the defendant.

To care for the unconscious Mrs. Clark was admittedly part of her duty--a duty which she was performing for her principal, the hospital proprietor, who employed her for that purpose, and who was in turn paid by the patient for such service. That duty included within its purview a corollary duty on the part of such nurse not to continue in the giving of a 'hypodermoclysis' after it was plainly evident to her that something was wrong with its...