Title: Crawford v. Seufert

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

Affirmed January 22, 1964.
Charles R. Mowry, Portland, argued the cause for appellant. With him on the briefs was David W. Dardano, Portland.
Bruce Spaulding, Portland, argued the cause for respondent. On the brief were Mautz, Souther, Spaulding, Kinsey & Williamson, Portland.
Before McALLISTER, Chief Justice, and O'CONNELL, GOODWIN, DENECKE and LUSK, Justices.
AFFIRMED.
*370 GOODWIN, J.
This is an action for damages arising out of an automobile collision. The plaintiff appeals from an order setting aside a verdict in her favor and entering judgment n.o.v.
The sole issue is whether there was sufficient evidence to make out a jury question on the causal relation between the collision and the plaintiff's physical disorder. The plaintiff alleged in her complaint that the accident caused her to suffer "severe and permanent perforations of the diverticulum." The complaint alleged further that the "perforations of the diverticulum" produced an abscess formation in the "mesasigmoid."
The collision produced no outwardly apparent injuries at the time. The plaintiff said she slid across the seat of her automobile and hit the padded arm rest on the right door. The next day she felt some discomfort and recalled that there had been, at the time of the accident, a sensation of "burning pain" in the lower right side of her abdominal region. She reported "a tearing sensation" to her doctor, who suspected that she might have suffered an injury to a recent surgical repair of a hernia. He treated her accordingly with medication for the relief of pain, and prescribed rest and heat therapy.
Thereafter the plaintiff went on an automobile trip which took some two weeks. Upon her return from that trip, she again felt discomfort, this time on both sides of the lower abdominal region. Her doctor eventually discovered evidence of a mass in the mesentery, along the sigmoid colon. The mass was removed surgically, and routine laboratory procedures were followed (to discover whether the mass was malignant). The laboratory procedures were not *371 directed to the discovery of the exact nature of the mass, nor to its connection, if any, with the sigmoid colon. There was other evidence in the record to the effect that the plaintiff was suffering from a more or less chronic degenerative ailment of the colon known to the medical profession as "diverticulosis" and to laymen as pouches or bulges along the wall of the lower portion of the large intestine. Since the sigmoid colon functions primarily as a storage facility for digestive waste, these diverticula are undesirable, and, when perforated, are troublesome.
Because of the narrow issue presented by the plaintiff's pleading, the only question of importance in this case is whether there was medical evidence to support her assertion that the particular perforation of a diverticulum of which she complained was induced by something that happened in the collision. It is on this point, then, that we scrutinize the doctor's testimony:
On cross examination he testified:
1, 2. The net result of the doctor's testimony was that he could not state an opinion that would help the jury to decide what caused this particular diverticulum to perforate, if, indeed, there was a perforation. His testimony on direct examination was only slightly *375 better than the testimony this court held to be insufficient in Hutchison v. Aetna Life Insurance Co., 182 Or 639, 645, 189 P2d 586 (1948):
On cross examination in the case at bar the doctor admitted that his opinion rested upon speculation. For medical opinion testimony to have any probative value, it must at least advise the jury that the inference drawn by the doctor is more probably correct than incorrect. If the probabilities are in balance, the matter is left to speculation. Speculation filtered through a jury is still speculation. Crewse v. Munroe, 224 Or 174, 179, 355 P2d 637 (1960).
The trial court properly set aside the verdict.
Affirmed.