Opinion ID: 1924326
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Refusal of Jury Instruction Requested by Dr. Vaughan and the Group

Text: Dr. Vaughan and the Group assert that their substantial rights were prejudiced by refusal of the trial court to give their requested jury instruction no. 4: A physician does not guarantee the success of her treatment, and has fulfilled her duty to a patient if she prescribes a proper treatment, even though it does not produce good results. APJI 25.05 Regarding physicians, the trial court instructed the jury: Well, with respect to the physician, in performing professional services for a patient a physician must use such reasonable care, skill and diligence as physicians in the same general neighborhood and in the same general line of practice ordinarily have and exercise in a like case. General neighborhood means the national medical neighborhood of reasonably competent physicians in the same line of practice, acting in the same or similar circumstances. And on the subject, still, and duties of a physician, let me instruct you that you have heard some evidence in the case concerning alternative methods of treatment. So if the defendant doctors in treatment of the plaintiff had available different or alternative methods of treatment and each of these methods was within the standard of care practiced by other physicians in the medical community, the mere fact that a bad result was obtained by use of a method employed by the defendant doctors cannot be a basis for imposing liability. On the other hand, you may impose liability if you are reasonably satisfied by substantial evidence that the method employed by the defendants in the treatment of the plaintiff was below the applicable standard of care, or that the method selected was within the standard of care but the doctor was negligent or below the standard of care in carrying out that method. (Emphasis added.) Dr. Vaughan and the Group objected to the refusal of the trial court to give their requested jury instruction by stating: [W]e would respectfully except to the Court's failure to give our requested charges number 2, number 4, number 6, number 7, number 9, number 11, number 16, number 24, number 25, number 26, number 27, and number 28 on the grounds that they are correct statements of the law, that those charges are applicable to the facts in this case, and that those propositions were not adequately covered in the Court's oral charge. Rule 51, Ala. R. Civ. P., provides, in pertinent part: No party may assign as error the giving or failing to give a written instruction, or the giving of an erroneous, misleading, incomplete, or otherwise improper oral charge unless that party objects thereto before the jury retires to consider its verdict, stating the matter objected to and the grounds of the objection. `The ground that a jury instruction is a correct statement of the law is insufficient to preserve an objection to the trial court's refusal to give the instruction.' Ex parte R.D.W., 773 So.2d 426, 429 n. 3 (Ala.2000) (quoting Knight v. State, 710 So.2d 511, 513 (Ala.Crim.App.1997)). See also Towner v. Hosea O. Weaver & Sons, 614 So.2d 1020 (Ala.1993). Therefore, the first stated ground of objection for the refusal of the trial court to give requested jury instruction no. 4 did not preserve an objection. The second ground of objection, that those charges are applicable to the facts in this case, suffers the same lack of particularity that invalidates the first ground. See Knight, supra . The third ground of objection by Dr. Vaughan and the Group, referring only by number to 12 jury instructions refused, that the oral charge of the trial court did not adequately cover those propositions is too general to give the trial court an opportunity to correct any errors that it may have made. Northeast Alabama Reg'l Med. Ctr. v. Owens, 584 So.2d 1360, 1364 (Ala.1991). Even if Dr. Vaughan and the Group properly had interposed a legally sufficient objection to the refusal of their requested jury instruction no. 4, the trial court did not err in refusing that instruction because the oral instruction of the trial court to the jury adequately covered the requested written instruction. Baptist Mem'l Hosp. v. Bowen, 591 So.2d 74 (Ala.1991), and Owens, supra .