Weeda v. District of Columbia

• Decision Date: 06 March 1987
• Docket Number: No. 83-366.,83-366.
• Citation: 521 A.2d 1156
• Parties: Philip A. WEEDA, Appellant, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Appellee.
• Court: D.C. Court of Appeals

521 A.2d 1156

Philip A. WEEDA, Appellant, v. DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, Appellee.

No. 83-366.

District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Argued September 13, 1984.

Decided March 6, 1987.

J. Joseph Barse, with whom Robert E. Higdon, Washington, D.C., was on brief, for appellant.

Richard B. Nettler, Asst. Corp. Counsel at the time the brief was filed, with whom Inez Smith Reid, Corp. Counsel, John H. Suda, Principal Deputy Corp. Counsel, and Charles L. Reischel, Deputy Corp. Counsel, were on brief, for appellee. Gary S. Freeman, Asst. Corp. Counsel, Washington, D.C., also entered an appearance for appellee.

Before MACK and TERRY, Associate Judges, and REILLY, Senior Judge.

REILLY, Senior Judge:

Appellant sued the District of Columbia for a permanent physical disability allegedly caused by the negligence of its employees in extricating him from the wreckage of an automobile. After a lengthy

I

The evidence in the ten day trial may be summarized as follows:

Early one evening in October 1979, appellant, a college student, and two other young friends, John Gannon and Robert Langley, drove in Gannon's car from suburban Maryland into the city. After going to two different taverns and drinking substantial amounts of beer, they returned to Gannon's car to start back for home at about 1:30 a.m. As Gannon drove east on Florida Avenue, N.W., at high speed, he attempted to make an illegal left turn at the intersection of Florida and Connecticut Avenues and lost control of the car. It skidded, smashed against a metal traffic pole, flipped over on its side and came to rest leaning against the pole. Appellant, who had been sitting in back, was wedged between the front and back seats, his legs pointing upwards and his head lolling outside the left rear window just above the pavement. The driver, Gannon, was also trapped, his head hanging out the window on the same side of car. Langley, who was next to him, managed to extricate himself by climbing out on the upper side.

Soon thereafter, the city Fire Department dispatched fire trucks and two emergency ambulance crews to the scene of the accident. Wayne Paxton, an emergency medical technician and crewman in charge of the first ambulance to arrive, found appellant conscious and moving about. Despite the precarious position of the car, which limited access to appellant and created the risk of crushing his head, Paxton was able to apply a cervical collar to appellant's neck. When the tilting car was eventually stabilized by blocks placed under it by firemen, who then removed the roof, appellant was lifted out, placed on a long spine board and carried to a second ambulance, where an examination by Peter Podeli, a paramedic, revealed that appellant was paralyzed, unable to move his arms or legs.

Subsequent examination at the hospital disclosed fractures of the vertebrae. It was also discovered that the cause of the paralysis was an injury to the spinal cord. Despite prolonged treatments, including surgery, appellant's quadriplegic condition has not been corrected. He remains permanently crippled.

In the suit against the District, appellant conceded that the vertebral fractures, i.e., a broken neck, were incurred by the impact of the car against the traffic pole, but attributed the spinal cord injury to the asserted negligence of the rescue squad in handling him after the accident occurred. It was appellant's contention at trial that when the squad arrived, his arms and legs were still functioning, and that the crippling damage to the spinal cord could have been averted had the rescue team taken the precaution of strapping a short spinal board to his back, before removing him from the wrecked automobile.¹

To support this theory, appellant called a paramedic, Peter Podell, to the stand. Podell was in the second ambulance to arrive, a vehicle driven by another paramedic, Robert Hernandez. He testified that he examined appellant, then still trapped inside the car, and in doing so, extended his hand and asked appellant to squeeze it. Appellant, he said, squeezed his hand "with both of his hands, one at a time." Podell also asked appellant to move his legs, and appellant complied. According to Podell, these responses indicated that appellant had full sensory-motor capability and that his central nervous system was intact. Nevertheless, suspecting that appellant had sustained a back injury, Podell decided that appellant's body should be immobolized by affixing a short spine board. He went back to his ambulance to pick up such a device, but was blocked on his return by firemen who had surrounded the car.

After the roof of the car had been pulled back, Podell testified that he watched the removal of appellant from the wreckage without the use of the short spinal board or any back support, and saw appellant's body "rotate" and his head move a "significant number of inches." Appellant was then placed on a long spine board and deposited in the Podell ambulance. Although that board did provide some support, Podell said,

There was no support to the lateral, to the side of the head, to prevent a twisting motion with either of the two accepted pieces of apparatus to use for that purpose, nor was the head secured to the board with any of the normal methods for doing so.

It was after appellant was in the ambulance that Podell reported that the injured man could no longer move his limbs.

Appellant also called two expert witnesses: Dr. Harvey Ammerman, a neurosurgeon, and Dr. Roger Halterman, a specialist in emergency medicine. Dr. Ammerman, asked to assume the facts related by Podell, testified that it was "more medically probable that something occurred between the first and second examinations that resulted in [appellant's] becoming quadriplegic." Ammerman concluded that "something had impinged in that interval upon the spinal cord that damaged it to a degree that stopped it from functioning permanently." Dr. Halterman was also asked to assume the facts as stated by Podell, and he agreed that appellant's paralysis was attributable to something which occurred after the initial examination by Podell-specifically, "the motion allowed to occur during the extraction. . . ."² Thus, the expert medical opinion supporting appellant's case rested on the assumption that Podell's testimony was true.

The bulk of the evidence the District offered was intended to prove that (1) the testimony of Podell deserved no credence and hence destroyed the foundation for the opinions of the plaintiffs medical experts; (2) the physical position of the plaintiff in the wrecked and tilted car when the paramedics arrived precluded the use of a short spinal board without exposing him to the risks of a crushed skull, if the car completely toppled over, or of aggravated injury to his back once the car was propped up; and (3) the injury to the spinal cord which caused paralysis was the result of the violent impact suffered by the plaintiff when the careening vehicle struck a light pole and thus rendered his condition irretrievable by the rescue squad.

Podell's version of what happened at the scene was contradicted in crucial respects by other witnesses who participated in the rescue operation. Paxton testified that Podell was never in close contact with the occupants of the wrecked car before it was propped up by the firemen and was not even on hand later to assist in lifting out the principal victim of the accident. This portion of his testimony was corroborated by Hernandez who was unable to recall ever seeing his ambulance mate beside the car. Paxton also underscored the virtual impossibility of attaching a short spine board to appellant's back, without having to bend his body at a time when its position was compressed inside the tilted vehicle. He averred that he was aware of the danger of an aggravating injury if appellant twisted his neck, and therefore held the latter's head in traction while he and another man extricated him.³

Over the strenuous objection of appellant's counsel, evidence of possible bias on Podell's part against the District was admitted. It appeared that while he was an ambulance employee, Podell received an official reprimand and a demotion stemming from two separate incidents of misconduct, unrelated to this case. At the time of the trial, Podell was working in Kansas, having quit his local job shortly after his demotion.

To establish that appellant's paralysis was attributable to the automobile accident and not to any act or omission, negligent or otherwise, by its agents, the District called as its principal expert witness Dr. Arthur Kobrine, a professor of neurological surgery at George Washington University Hospital. He was of the opinion that appellant's paralysis was due to the accident itself and would have occurred regardless of any act by the rescue team. Kobrine said that his opinion was based upon (1) a videotaped reenactment of the rescue operation, which demonstrated that there was "very little" movement of appellant's neck as he was being removed from the car; and (2) information in an "operative note" made by the surgeon at the hospital which revealed the presence of "extruded pieces of internal vertebral disc" inside appellant's spinal canal that were "squeezing" into his spinal cord. Kobrine explained that a "massive force" was necessary to extrude the disc into the spinal canal, and from this he concluded that it was the accident itself which caused both the extrusion of the disc and the "squeezing" of the disk into the spinal cord. Finally, he stated:

[M]asses that acutely extrude into the spinal canal and squeeze into the spinal cord . . . that has just undergone an injury, severe and sufficient enough to fracture [a] cervical vertebra, is in my opinion . . . sufficient to cause an inevitable progression of spinal cord dysfunction which leads to quadriplegia.

This opinion, Dr. Kobrine explained, was consistent with the results of his laboratory research which revealed...