Wilson v. Scott, A--11180

• Decision Date: 01 February 1967
• Docket Number: No. A--11180,A--11180
• Citation: 412 S.W.2d 299
• Parties: Anthony WILSON, Petitioner, v. Frank E. SCOTT, Respondent.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

Page 299

412 S.W.2d 299

Anthony WILSON, Petitioner, v. Frank E. SCOTT, Respondent.

No. A--11180.

Supreme Court of Texas.

Feb. 1, 1967.

Groce, Hebdon, Fahey & Smith, Thomas H. Sharp, Jr., with above firm, San Antonio, for petitioner.

Earle Cobb, Jr., San Antonio, for respondent.

ON MOTION FOR REHEARING

POPE, Justice.

The opinion handed down on November 16, 1966 is withdrawn and the following is substituted.

Plaintiff, Frank E. Scott, sued Dr. Anthony Wilson for failure to make reasonable disclosure of risks incident to a stapedectomy operation. He alleged that his right to refuse the operation upon his left ear was violated because the preoperative warning was not sufficiently full for him to exercise an informed consent, and the operation was unsuccessful. The trial court rendered judgment for Dr. Wilson after sustaining his motion for instructed verdict, but the Court of Civil Appeals reversed that judgment. 396 S.W.2d 532 (1965). Dr. Wilson's points of error in this Court urge that Scott had the burden of proving by expert medical evidence the medically accepted standard for cautioning a patient about risks inherent in the operation, and that the record is devoid of such medically proved standard. We sustain the first point but hold that there was evidence of the medical standard. We affirm the judgment of the Court of Civil Appeals.

Plaintiff has had a hearing defect in his left ear for more than twenty years. He first noticed the problem while a student in high school. For short periods of time he tried to use hearing aids, but he testified that he was not happy with them. Without an aid he could hear conversations, but he said he was sure he missed a part of them. He said that many people who knew him were not aware that he had a hearing loss. The Navy rejected him during World War II by reason of his defective hearing, but the Merchant Marines accepted him.

In 1962 Scott consulted Dr. Wilson who correctly diagnosed the cause of the hearing defect as a bony growth on the stapes bone which inhibited its vibration and dulled Scott's hearing. He recommended a stapedectomy with a vein graft. The operation is relatively new and is regarded as a delicate and complex one. It is performed inside the middle ear through a speculum in an area about the size of a thimble and is done with a special microscope and special instruments. Dr. Wilson is highly trained and has received special instruction in the performance of stapedectomy surgery. He had performed similar ear operations, but Scott's operation was his first stapedectomy with vein graft. Dr. Wilson performed the operation on February 8, 1962, and a few days later Scott lost all hearing in his left ear.

Scott did not allege or prove that Dr. Wilson improperly, negligently or unskillfully performed the operation. He contends that the operation was elective and not done in an emergency. He says that he made direct inquiry about the risks involved in this operation, but Dr. Wilson did not fully inform him of all of them. Scott acknowledges that Dr. Wilson advised him that ninety per cent of such operations were successful, there was a ten per cent possibility that his hearing would be no better or could be worse after the operation, and he might sustain an altered sense of taste. Dr. Wilson also told Scott there was a risk associated with the anesthetic from which people sometimes die. Dr. Wilson testified that he specifically warned Scott that one per cent of the patients suffered a total loss of hearing as a result of the operation. Scott alleged and testified that since the operation, he has experienced vertigo, instability, tinnitus, or a roaring in the ear, and total loss of hearing in his left ear. He said that he was warned of none of those hazards.

Scott testified that Dr. Wilson, in discussing the probable results, told him about statistical experiences in terms of 'we,' from which he inferred that Dr. Wilson had performed this specific operation previously. Although he had performed related operations, Dr. Wilson's former experience with this specific procedure had been confined to experimental operations upon cadavers under the instruction of the originators of the procedure and the best available instructors.

Physicians and surgeons have a duty to make a reasonable disclosure to a patient of risks that are incident to medical diagnosis and treatment. This duty is based upon the patient's right to information adequate for him to exercise an informed consent to or refusal of the procedure. Salgo v. Leland Stanford Jr. Univ. Bd. of Trustees, 154 Cal.App.2d 560, 317 P.2d 170 (Ct.App.1957); Bowers v. Talmage, 159 So.2d 888 (Fla.App.1963); Natanson v. Kline, 186 Kan. 393, 350 P.2d 1093, on rehearing, 187 Kan. 186, 354 P.2d 670 (1960); 60 Colum.L.Rev. 1193 (1960); Annot. 99 A.L.R.2d 599 (1965). The nature and extent of the disclosure depends upon the medical problem as well as the patient. In some medical procedures the dangers are great; in others they are minimal. See Atkins v. Humes, 110 So.2d 663, 81 A.L.R.2d 590 (Fla.1959). It has been suggested that some disclosures may so disturb the patient that they serve as hindrances to needed treatment. Patrick v. Sedwick, 391 P.2d 453, (Alaska 1964); Di Filippo v. Preston, 53 Del. 539, 173 A.2d 333 (Sup.Ct.1961); Natanson v. Kline, supra; Lund, The Doctor, The Patient, and The Truth, 19 Tenn.L.Rev. 344 (1946); Smith, Therapeutic Privilege to Withhold Specific Diagnosis from Patient Sick with Serious or Fatal Illness, 19 Tenn.L.Rev. 349 (1946). Certain disclosures in some instances may even be bad medical practice. Aiken v. Clary, 396 S.W.2d 668, 674 (Mo.1965).

Dr. Wilson recognizes that he owed a duty of some kind, but insists that a part of Scott's burden of proof was the establishment of a standard against which a physician's conduct may be tested, and that the standard is a medical one which must be proved by expert medical evidence of what a reasonable practitioner of the same school and the same or similar locality would have advised a patient under similar circumstances. The standard, says Dr. Wilson, is a medical judgment which includes discretion and an evaluation of scientific and medical data as well as the patient himself. Scott argues that expert medical evidence is unnecessary to the jury's determination that Dr. Wilson departed from the duty standard. Furthermore, Scott contends he actually proved a standard by Dr. Wilson's own expert medical opinion.

A number of cases in other jurisdictions hold that the plaintiff, in an action against a physician for failure to disclose hazards, must prove a medical standard by expert medical evidence. Di Filippo v. Preston, supra; Bowers v. Talmage, supra; Visingardi v. Tirone, 178 So.2d 135 (Fla.App.1965); Hunt v. Bradshaw, 242 N.C. 517, 88 S.E.2d 762 (1955); Govin v. Hunter 374 P.2d 421 (Wyo.1962); McCoid, A Reappraisal of Liability for Unauthorized Medical Treatment, 41 Minn.L.Rev. 381 (1957); Comment, 18 Baylor L.Rev. 137 (1966); Contra, 75 Harv.L.Rev. 1445 (1962). Williams v. Menehan, 191 Kan. 6, 379 P.2d 292, 295 (1963) affirmed a judgment for a doctor upon demurrer to the evidence because 'The record is devoid of any standard of care required of the defendant doctors.' The Supreme Court of Missouri in Aiken v. Clary, supra, 396 S.W.2d at 674, recently reexamined and overruled its former decision in Mitchell v. Robinson, 334 S.W.2d 11, 79 A.L.R.2d 1017 (Mo.1960). Mitchell had inferred that lay testimony was sufficient to establish the standard for medical practitioners in warning about risks. After first holding that the plaintiff has the burden to prove the standard, the Court wrote:

'We have reexamined this question and have concluded that the question of what disclosure of risks incident to proposed treatment should be made in a particular situation involves medical judgment and that expert testimony thereon should be required in malpractice cases involving that issue. The question to be determined by the jury is whether defendant doctor in that particular situation failed to adhere to a standard of reasonable care. These are not matters of common knowledge or within the experience of laymen. Expert medical evidence thereon is just as necessary as is such testimony on the correctness of the handling in cases involving surgery or treatment. In Fisher v. Wilkinson, Mo., 382 S.W.2d 627, 632, we held: 'Without the aid of expert medical testimony in this case a jury could not, without resorting to conjecture and surmise or by setting up an arbitrary standard of their own, determine that defendants failed to exercise their skill and use the care exercised by the ordinarily skillful, careful and prudent physician acting under the same or similar circumstances.' And, as we said in Pedigo v. Roseberry, 340 Mo. 724, 736, 102 S.W.2d 600, 607: 'Juries should not be thus turned loose and privileged to say, perchance, the method of treating an injury * * * (or an illness) was negligent notwithstanding, for instance, the uncontradicted competent testimony establish(ing) that the uniformly adopted practice of the most skillful surgeons (or physicians) had been followed.' The question is not what, regarding the risks involved, the juror would relate to the patient under the same or similar circumstances, or even what a reasonable Man would relate, but what a reasonable Medical practitioner would do. Such practitioner would consider the state of the patient's health, the condition of his heart and nervous system, his mental state, and would take into account, among other things, whether the risks involved were mere remote possibilities or something which occurred with some sort of frequency or regularity. This determination involves medical judgment as to whether disclosure of possible risks may have such an adverse effect on the patient as to jeopardize success of the proposed therapy, no matter how expertly performed. * * *'

We conclude...