Seraphine v. Bullitt Ventures, Inc.
| Decision Date | 08 January 2021 |
| Docket Number | NO. 2019-CA-1040-MR,2019-CA-1040-MR |
| Parties | JAMES D. SERAPHINE, AS EXECUTOR FOR THE ESTATE OF JAMES G. SERAPHINE; and JASON SERAPHINE, AS EXECUTOR FOR THE ESTATE OF JANE CAROLYN SERAPHINE APPELLANTS v. BULLITT VENTURES, INC., d/b/a SHONEY'S RESTAURANTS OF KENTUCKY; SECURA INSURANCE, A MUTUAL COMPANY; and BAPTIST HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, INC. APPELLEES |
| Court | Kentucky Court of Appeals |
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
APPEAL FROM JEFFERSON CIRCUIT COURT
On Thanksgiving Day, November 26, 2015, 68-year-old Jane Carolyn Seraphine and her husband, James G. Seraphine, stopped to get breakfast at their local Shoney's restaurant, owned by Bullitt Ventures, Inc., in Louisville, Kentucky. After exiting their vehicle, Mrs. Seraphine and her husband made their way toward the restaurant's main entrance; Mrs. Seraphine's view through Shoney's glass front door of the floor and floormat inside the restaurant was unobstructed. A local fireman who had been dining in the restaurant moved to open the door for Mrs. Seraphine. As she thanked him for holding the door and passed through the threshold, Mrs. Seraphine's foot caught in a loop in the restaurant's floormat, causing her to trip and fall on her left arm. She sustained a serious arm fracture as a result of her fall.
Mrs. Seraphine's fall was captured on video by a security camera covering Shoney's vestibule area. According to the video footage, the floormat had lain flat before and after Mrs. Seraphine's fall. A number of other customers traversed the floormat that morning without incident. After Mrs. Seraphine's fall, another firefighter motioned for the restaurant's manager to remove the floormat from the entry way, which he did. The video then showed that the manager later returned the mat to its former position on the floor. The video also revealed that a Shoney's employee had mopped the area of the floor underneath the floormat earlier that morning.
The floormat at issue was owned and maintained by Aramark, a company that, among other things, leases floormats to commercial establishments, like Shoney's. The mat had been delivered to Shoney's by Aramark two days prior to Mrs. Seraphine's fall, after it had been out of service for a week for cleaning. As usual, the mat had been inspected and laundered by Aramark on a biweekly basis and had not been deemed by Aramark to be defective. In fact, Mr. and Mrs. Seraphine had encountered that same floormat every other week since 2012 four to six times a week and had never experienced any problems.
After Mrs. Seraphine's fall, Mr. Seraphine drove her to Baptist Health Louisville, where she was evaluated in the Emergency Department for a primary complaint of right shoulder pain. An x-ray of her right arm revealed a severelycomminuted (or splintered) fracture of the humerus bone with moderate displacement. Upon consultation, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Madhusan Yakkanti recommended surgical repair. Due to Mrs. Seraphine's complex medical history of diabetes, hypertension, knee surgery, stroke, and carotid endarterectomy, the surgery was delayed until Mrs. Seraphine could be medically cleared for the procedure.
The following morning, the hospitalist service determined that Mrs. Seraphine was "medically stable for surgery." Dr. Yakkanti examined Mrs. Seraphine and the results of the CT scan of her right shoulder again, discussing his opinion on the need for surgery with the Seraphine family. He believed that the severity of the bone displacement made non-operative management of the fracture unlikely to be successful.
On November 28th, two days after her fall, Mrs. Seraphine underwent surgery by Dr. Yakkanti. Although Dr. Yakkanti's operative notes described the surgery as largely uneventful, the fracture repair had been complicated, and he had to use several different devices to stabilize a number of bone fragments.
Following her initial recovery in the post-operative recovery room, Mrs. Seraphine was transferred back to the orthopedic floor of Baptist Heath around 2:00 p.m. Over the next several hours of observation, the nurses on duty noted that Mrs. Seraphine's vital signs remained stable, and she was given twoPercocet tablets for pain as ordered. Around 7:00 p.m., Nurse Kristina Thomas performed her initial nursing assessment following the nursing shift change, charting that Mrs. Seraphine was drowsy but arousable, and her vital signs were still consistent.
At 10:00 p.m. that night, Mrs. Seraphine's condition unexpectedly changed. Her vital signs were no longer stable - her blood pressure had dropped, and her oxygen saturation levels had decreased. Nurse Thomas immediately summoned the hospital's Rapid Response Team ("RRT") to assist with evaluation and treatment. Upon their prompt arrival, RRT assessed Mrs. Seraphine's condition and increased her oxygen via a continued positive airway pressure ("CPAP") mask, administered intravenous saline, and gave her Narcan to reverse the sedative and depressive effects of the previously administered narcotic pain medication.
Mrs. Seraphine immediately responded to the Narcan, becoming more alert with improved vital signs, and RRT determined that Mrs. Seraphine did not need to be moved emergently to a higher level of care. Nurse Thomas documented at 10:25 p.m. that she notified Dr. Yakkanti, detailing the interventions performed by RRT and Mrs. Seraphine's overall condition. Dr. Yakkanti ordered that Mrs. Seraphine's pain medications be discontinued and decided not to transfer her to a higher level of care.
By 11:20 p.m., Mrs. Seraphine's vitals, although stable, had not significantly improved since the RRT's intervention, and her level of consciousness had decreased. Nurse Thomas again called Dr. Yakkanti to report Mrs. Seraphine's status. He ordered Mrs. Seraphine to be transferred to a telemetry unit for increased monitoring. However, before the transfer could be accomplished, Mrs. Seraphine went into sudden cardiorespiratory arrest, necessitating resuscitation by Baptist staff. She never regained consciousness. Mrs. Seraphine suffered three more cardiorespiratory arrests before 4:00 a.m. Baptist determined that Mrs. Seraphine had sustained a severe anoxic brain injury, and the family decided to withdraw artificial life-preserving measures. Mrs. Seraphine passed away at approximately 6:56 p.m. on December 1, 2015.
On May 25, 2016, Mr. Seraphine filed suit both individually and as the executor of Mrs. Seraphine's Estate in Jefferson Circuit Court against Shoney's, alleging that Shoney's had been negligent in its utilization and placement of its floormat, resulting in the injury and wrongful death of Mrs. Seraphine.1 On October 26, 2016, Mr. Seraphine filed his first amended complaint to include Dr. Yakkanti and Baptist as defendants, alleging that their medicalnegligence led to Mrs. Seraphine's wrongful death. However, on April 28, 2017, well before this matter reached trial, all parties entered an agreed order dismissing Dr. Yakkanti as a party. On April 10, 2019, less than a month before trial, Shoney's filed a third-party complaint seeking to name Aramark as a third-party defendant, which the trial court promptly denied.
The parties presented various evidentiary arguments in their pretrial motions in limine, which the trial court heard at the final pretrial conference on May 1, 2019. That same day, Shoney's moved for summary judgment on the issue of punitive damages. The trial court denied the motion.
On May 6, 2019, the trial court entered an order denying the defendants' motions to bifurcate the trial against Baptist and Shoney's. According to the trial court, the claims were too "inextricably intertwined" to be bifurcated and splitting the claims would likely lead to jury confusion and prejudice. Record ("R.") at 1859. The trial court also determined that judicial economy favored a single trial.
The case was tried before a jury from May 7 to May 17, 2019.2 At the conclusion of evidence, Shoney's filed written motions for directed verdicts on thepremises liability and wrongful death claims. Shoney's argued that Mr. Seraphine's wrongful death claim was premised entirely on evidence that Mrs. Seraphine's death as a result of shock would not have occurred but for Baptist's failure to recognize and treat Mrs. Seraphine's shock. According to Shoney's, Mrs. Seraphine's fall at the restaurant was not a substantial factor in her death because but for Baptist's alleged negligence, Mrs. Seraphine would not have died. The trial court agreed with Shoney's regarding wrongful death, holding:
I see two different stories here: the slip and fall and, at some point, . . . the Plaintiff's proof is that she should have survived the surgery and, but for the negligence of the hospital, she would not have passed. So, I am, in fact, going to grant the directed verdict to Shoney's as to wrongful death only.
Video Record ("V.R.") 5/16/19 1:10:27-1:10:58.
The trial court then ruled that: (1) Shoney's could be held...
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