Opinion ID: 2207773
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Preexisting Condition

Text: The district court refused the request that it instruct on the effect of preexisting conditions as follows: If you find from a preponderance of the evidence that [decedent], before, or at the time of receiving care and treatment by Defendants on August 17, 1983, was suffering from a physicial [sic] condition which pre-existed such care and treatment, and that such condition, if any, was aggravated or worsened by the professional negligence of the Defendants, or any of them, then if your verdict is for the Plaintiff, the Plaintiff is entitled to recover for the whole of the result, against such Defendant or Defendants whose negligence proximately caused or contributed to the result. There may be no recovery, however, for any results which would normally follow from any such pre-existing condition, regardless of the negligence of any of the Defendaants [sic]. The personal representative argues that because there was evidence that heparin can make a hemorrhage worse and that the hemorrhage began during the afternoon of August 17, the defendants were negligent at least in part by failing to terminate the infusion of heparin after that time; that is, that the hemorrhage was a preexisting condition which the defendants' negligence could be found to have exacerbated. It is true that there is evidence to support a finding that decedent's hemorrhage began on the afternoon of August 17, that Stewart was negligent after that time in failing to report decedent's symptoms and elevated PTT level to the physicians, and that Gard and Bare were negligent after that time in failing to discover the elevated PTT level and terminate the heparin. It is also true that there is evidence that heparin can make an existing hemorrhage worse. However, there was not sufficient evidence on which a jury could base the conclusion that decedent would not have lapsed into a coma and died if the hemorrhage had been discovered and the infusion of heparin immediately terminated. Jacobsen stated that there was a possibility that if the heparin had been discontinued before 6:50 p.m., the outcome [would] have been different, and that the sooner the heparin was discontinued, the more likely decedent was to recover. Such testimony is merely speculative. Thus, the requested instruction was not warranted by the evidence.