Opinion ID: 1893543
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Husband's Case

Text: The parties apparently agree that the husband is entitled to damages of $999 for fees paid to physicians. They agree also that the daily cost of the wife's 10-day stay in the hospital was $80 and that a normal stay for the myelogram procedure for which she was admitted is 3 days. They disagree, however, over whether her additional 7 days of hospitalization were causally connected to the accident and therefore compensable as consequential damages. In the trial justice's opinion, the wife's hospital stay was extended only because of a cardiac insufficiency disclosed by an electrocardiogram reading taken shortly after her admission, a condition unrelated to the accident and for which defendants therefore are not responsible. But the record shows that an additional factor contributing to 2 or 3 days of the wife's extended hospitalization was difficulty encountered in removing dye from the wife's spine. The extent to which her stay was prolonged for this reason, one clearly causally related to the accident, was apparently overlooked by the trial justice. The Wood decision therefore compels us again to apply the appellate rule and accordingly ascertain whether the record contains any evidence which, if accepted as truthful, would sustain a verdict including $999 in physicians' fees and $480 in hospital charges for a total of 6 days. Because we find that it does, the remittitur ordered should have been $521 rather than $761.