Phillips v. Buffalo Gen. Hosp.

• Decision Date: 09 December 1924
• Parties: PHILLIPS, v. BUFFALO GENERAL HOSPITAL.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

239 N.Y. 188

146 N.E. 199

PHILLIPS,

v.BUFFALO GENERAL HOSPITAL.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Dec. 9, 1924.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department.

Action by Margaret Phillips, against the Buffalo General Hospital. From the judgment on an order of the Appellate Division (207 App.Div. 641, 202 N.Y.S. 572), reversing a judgment for plaintiff and dismissing complaint, plaintiff appeals. Affirmed.

Ford White, of Buffalo, for appellant.

Frank G. Raichle, of Buffalo, for respondent.

POUND, J.

The defendant is a charitable corporation which maintains a hospital. The plaintiff was a paying patient. Through the negligence of an orderly who placed a hot water bottle against her body while she was in bed, unconscious, after an operation, she was severely burned.

The question is whether the rule of respondeat superior applies. The court below held that the waiver doctrine is the foundation of the rule which exempts a hospital from liability for the negligence of its physicians and nurses in the treatment of patients who are regarded as the beneficiaries of a charitable trust; that in applying such doctrine, no intelligible distinction can be made between the negligence of a nurse and of an orderly, and that the defendant's claim of immunity is to be sustained because plaintiff, by going to the hospital, impliedly waived all claims of liability growing out of the negligence of those who cared for her. Hordern v. Salvation Army, 199 N.Y. 233, 92 N.E. 626, 32 L.R.A. (N.S.) 62, 139 Am.St.Rep. 889. We are reluctant to permit an affirmance of the judgment to pass an acceptance of the theory that defendant's exemption from liability must rest on the waiver doctrine.

The comprehensive opinion in the case of Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital, 211 N.Y. 125, 105 N.E. 92, 52 L.R.A. (N.S.) 505, Ann.Cas.1915C, 581, discusses the waiver doctrine, but then proceeds to the consideration of the status of physicians and nurses in hospitals and reaches the conclusion that they are employed by the hospital to exercise their profession and calling to the best of their abilities according to their discretion; that in treating and caring for a patient they are not acting as servants of the hospital, and that the doctrine of respondeat superior does not apply when patients are injured through their negligent acts. In Matter of Bernstein v. Beth Israel Hospital, 236 N.Y. 268, 270, 140 N.E. 694, 695 (30 A.L.R. 598), the rationale of the rule in the Schloendorff Case is clearly stated thus:

“Such a hospital undertakes, not to heal or attempt to heal through the agency of others, but merely to supply others who will heal of attempt to heal on their own responsibility.”

[1] The doctrine of implied waiver is logically weak. It rests on the patent fiction that the patient has voluntarily relinquished a known right by coming to the hospital for treatment. As the trust fund doctrine of total immunity was rejected in the Hordern Case on the ground that purity of aim did not justify a tort when the victim was a stranger to the charity, so it may be said with equal force that one who is brought unconscious to a charitable hospital as a patient does not assume...