Opinion ID: 2615017
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: under the circumstances present here, foreseeability of the mother's fifth pregnancy was a question of fact

Text: The parents contend the challenged supervening cause instruction did not allow the jury to consider one of the critical elements of supervening cause  i.e., foreseeability to the doctors of the mother's pregnancy. [41] The trial court held that the doctors could not have foreseen that the mother would wilfully engage in conduct intended to bring about conception. Yet foreseeability in these circumstances may depend upon several factors, some of which might not have been fully unveiled at trial. The mother is of child-bearing age and there is no evidence that she had undergone any sterilization procedure. The mother admitted she had been told in 1978 that (1) she was Rh-negative and would need Rho-GAM after every miscarriage, abortion or childbirth and (2) there was a danger to later children if she did not receive it on any of those occasions. She contends she didn't think at the critical time about the earlier warnings. [42] Although the mother admitted Dr. Keuchel told her she did not receive Rho-GAM after her 1982 miscarriage, other parts of their conversation are in dispute. [43] For example, while Doctor Keuchel urges he told the mother she would need a blood test before she became pregnant again, she denies it. In sum, what the mother was told about her condition, what she knew and understood about it, who told her and when she was told are all disputed fact questions that bear on foreseeability. If in light of the evidence, the triers can say the mother was not adequately warned, then they might find it was foreseeable to the doctors that she would become pregnant. If she was adequately warned, but failed to appreciate the danger, her pregnancy might also be foreseeable. The doctors, on the other hand, would not be accountable for foreseeing that an adult female patient, who is sui juris, would willfully conceive in the face of the substantial risk of known and appreciated danger of severe disability or death to her child. 3.