Opinion ID: 2104073
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Pure Loss of Chance

Text: Mr. Sparkman claims that he should recover because Dr. Mayhue's negligence decreased his wife's chance of receiving effective treatment for uterine cancer, leading to Mr. Sparkman's loss of consortium. He claims that support for this cause of action is found in the loss of chance doctrine. [3] The loss of chance doctrine is usually traced to Hicks v. United States, 368 F.2d 626 (4th Cir.1966). In Hicks the plaintiff, the personal representative of an estate, sued for wrongful death, alleging medical malpractice. The decedent, a military dependent, had gone to the U.S. Navy dispensary complaining of intense abdominal pain and constant vomiting. The doctor on duty at the dispensary misdiagnosed the problem as being minor, prescribed drugs to relieve the pain, and told her to return in eight hours. The patient returned home and, a short time later, fell to the floor unconscious. She was rushed back to the dispensary but died of serious intestinal problems. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, interpreting Virginia law, concluded that: When a defendant's negligent action or inaction has effectively terminated a person's chance of survival, it does not lie in the defendant's mouth to raise conjectures as to the measure of the chances that he has put beyond the possibility of realization. If there was any substantial possibility of survival and the defendant has destroyed it, he is answerable. Hicks, 368 F.2d at 632. The court relied on an earlier case brought under the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C. § 688. Gardner v. Nat'l Bulk Carriers, Inc., 310 F.2d 284 (4th Cir.1962), cert. denied, 372 U.S. 913, 83 S.Ct. 728, 9 L.Ed.2d 721 (1963). The Gardner court, discussing the duty to rescue a seaman lost at sea, wrote: The duty arises when there is a reasonable possibility of rescue. Proximate cause is tested by the same standard, i.e., causation is proved if the master's omission destroys the reasonable possibility of rescue. Therefore, proximate cause here is implicit in the breach of duty. Indeed, the duty would be empty if it did not itself embrace the loss as a consequence of its breach. Once the evidence sustains the reasonable possibility of rescue, ample or narrow, according to the circumstances, total disregard of the duty, refusal to make even a try, as was the case here, imposes liability. Moreover, the master's default  virtually complete  is emphasized by another consequence flowing therefrom. It obliterated all possibility of evidence to prove whether a search if undertaken, would have succeeded or failed. Id. at 287. The idea that plaintiffs were owed compensation for decreased opportunity to be saved, even where survival was unlikely in any case, had crystallized. The loss of chance doctrine has since become an established part of state tort law. The compensable injury is not the result, which is usually death, but the reduction in the probability that the patient would recover or obtain better results if the defendant had not been negligent. See, e.g., Perez v. Las Vegas Medical Center, 107 Nev. 1, 805 P.2d 589 (1991). The doctrine has also received a large amount of attention from academics. See, e.g., Joseph King, Causation, Valuation, and Chance in Personal Injury Torts Involving Preexisting Conditions and Future Consequences, 90 Yale L.J. 1353 (1981).