Opinion ID: 1970225
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Delaware Law and Trends Outside Delaware

Text: The only decision of this Court to discuss the loss of chance doctrine is Shively v. Klein, Del.Supr., 551 A.2d 41 (1988). In Shively, the parents of a deceased child brought a wrongful death suit against a doctor alleging that the doctor committed medical malpractice by failing to diagnose and treat properly the child's illness. The jury returned a verdict in favor of the doctor and the Superior Court denied the plaintiffs' motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and new trial. The plaintiffs appealed claiming, inter alia, that a loss of chance instruction should have been included in the jury charge. This Court began its analysis of this claim by stating the usual negligence rule: To prove proximate cause, the plaintiff has to show that the doctor's negligence was the probable cause of the injury. In quantifiable terms, probable is any likelihood greater than 50 percent. Id. at 43 (emphasis in original). After describing the differing approaches to the loss of chance doctrine, the Court observed that adopting the instruction proposed by the plaintiffs in Shively would have been a drastic departure from the causation standards consistently applied in Delaware. Id. at 44. The Court concluded, however, that it need not rule on the validity of the loss of chance doctrine because the plaintiffs had not pleaded that theory of recovery: While we do not here rule out entirely the possible applicability of the doctrine in an appropriate case in Delaware, we note that it is important that any such innovative theory of negligence be pleaded with particularity and taken up at the pretrial conference so that the opposing side has the appropriate knowledge of the issue and the court has a chance to consider it. We also note that a change in the law of the magnitude suggested by plaintiffs would be an appropriate subject of legislation. Id. (citation omitted). [3] Thus, Delaware law is undeveloped. In this case, it is not necessary for us to explicate what the law would be in a hypothetical personal injury or survival action. It is appropriate in our view, however, that we explore the national state of the law in order to decide the certified question in the proper framework. The loss of chance doctrine has been the subject of considerable debate among courts and commentators. The controversy has been fueled, in part, by disagreements over the nature and effect of the doctrine. In general, there appear to be three approaches that courts have adopted when addressing the loss of chance doctrine. The first approach is to reject the doctrine as being contrary to traditional principles of tort causation (the traditional approach). The second approach is to adopt the doctrine as an exception to traditional causation standards (the relaxed causation approach). The third approach is to adopt the doctrine as a method of compensating the lost chance of survival, rather than the death itself (the proportional approach). Under the proportional approach, the victim is entitled to a portion of the total amount of death-related damages reflecting the reduction of the victim's chance of survival.