Opinion ID: 1534917
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Appellee Hospitals.

Text: With regard to fraudulent concealment, all appellants make the same arguments against the hospitals as they do with the doctors. We reject these arguments as to the appellee hospitals in all cases. First, it is unclear whether the appellants have even sufficiently pleaded fraudulent concealment against the hospitals. At least in the St. Joseph's cases, the plaintiffs' affidavits responding to the hospital's motions for summary judgment stated as follows:  [Hospital] had made no inquiry into the safety of the product orthoblock for use in human spines prior to allowing Arthur and Gocio to perform their first orthoblock surgery, or any time thereafter;  That [hospital] knew before Arthur and Gocio performed their very first orthoblock surgery that the patients would be experimented upon with a non-FDA approved product;  That [hospital] made no inquiry and had no information regarding the long-term effect of orthoblocks in the spines of humans and had they inquired of the manufacturer they would have learned that during the entire time Arthur and Gocio performed orthoblock surgery, the manufacturer had no scientific basis to support the use of orthoblock in the spines of human beings;  that [hospital] had developed no protocol to insure the patients were adequately informed of the risks involved in participating in an experiment with a product not approved by the FDA for spinal surgery;  that [hospital] knew from the very beginning that orthoblocks were not designed for use in application where it would undergo significant flexural, tensile or sheer forces, the very forces that are in the spine. These allegations, as well as their experts' affidavits, go to the merits of appellants' underlying claims against the hospitals, i.e., the breach of the hospitals' duty of care owed to appellants. Indeed, an implicit facet of the appellants' fraudulent-concealment claims against the hospitals is that the hospitals owed them a duty to obtain their informed consent, a contention which the hospitals deny. We need not decide this issue. As we have already stated, failure to obtain informed consent does not equate to fraudulent concealment. To the extent that the hospitals may have owed the appellants such a duty, we would affirm as to the hospitals for the same reasons we expressed as to the doctors in the Mitchell case above. While there is evidence that the hospitals knew or should have known of the doctors' use of Orthoblock and its experimental nature (perhaps more so in the St. Joseph's cases than in the AMI cases), evidence of affirmative conduct on the part of the hospitals to conceal the appellants' causes of action is lacking. Even in the cases where we reverse as to the doctor appellees, we do so because of conduct on the part of the doctors evincing fact questions as to fraudulent concealment. During oral argument, counsel for appellants conceded that he was not proceeding against the hospitals on a theory of vicarious liability. There being no reason to impute this conduct to the hospitals, we reject the appellants' fraudulent-concealment argument as to the hospitals in the cases where we reverse as to the doctors.