Opinion ID: 1597354
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Jury Charge on Causation

Text: As a part of the trial court's charge to the jury on medical causation, at the request of Reagan's counsel the trial judge quoted a passage from this Court's opinion in Parker v. Collins, 605 So.2d 824 (Ala.1992). Defense counsel objected to that charge as confusing, and now the Foundation contends that the instruction was misleading and incomplete and improperly lowered the standard of proof on that issue. The language from Parker at issue is: It is not necessary to establish that prompt care would have prevented the injury or death of the patient; rather, the plaintiff must produce evidence to show that her condition was adversely affected by the alleged negligence. 605 So.2d at 827. The Foundation argues that this instruction, coming at the end of the trial judge's jury charge on medical causation, improperly relaxed the standard on medical causation from the requirement that the plaintiff show that the negligence probably caused the injury. The Foundation further contends that if this Court rules that the language from Parker is a proper charge under the facts of this case, then we will be changing the law of medical causation in Alabama. We disagree. The general facts of Parker and the facts of this case are quite similar. In Parker, the plaintiffs sued a physician and a hospital, alleging that after Mrs. Parker sought medical treatment regarding a lump in her breast, Dr. Collins negligently performed her mammogram and then negligently interpreted it to be negative for cancer. 605 So.2d at 825. Several months later, another physician diagnosed her breast cancer, which by then had spread into her lymph nodes, requiring a radical mastectomy of her entire breast and lessening her chances for long-term survival. Id. at 826. Thus, in Parker, the issue was whether the physician's negligence, which caused a delay in diagnosis and proper treatment of the plaintiff's breast cancer, caused her condition to be adversely affected. Similarly, in this case, the issue was whether Dr. Zeiger's delay in providing proper treatment of Reagan's meningitis caused her condition to be adversely affected. Thus, we conclude that the jury charge was proper, given the facts of this case. Further, as the Foundation has noted, any alleged error in a trial court's jury instructions must be reviewed in the context of the entire charge and not taken in isolation. Sewell v. Internal Medicine & Endocrine Associates, P.C., 600 So.2d 242 (Ala. 1992). Reviewing the charge as a whole, we conclude that the trial judge properly instructed the jury that the standard of proof for determining medical causation was that the plaintiff must prove that the negligence probably caused the plaintiff's injury, not simply that it possibly caused the injury. Thus, we find no reversible error in the court's jury charge on the standard of proof for determining medical causation. Accordingly, we hold that the trial court's properly denied the Foundation's motion for a new trial. The judgment is affirmed. AFFIRMED. HOUSTON, KENNEDY, INGRAM and COOK, JJ., concur.