Court Opinion

ID: 9860188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:13:47.560961+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:18:55.271278
License: Public Domain

BURKE, J., dissents: We are asked to decide whether the doctrine of strict tort liability includes within its purview, a hospital which ancillary to the services rendered a patient furnishes, by way of transfusion, blood which contains serum hepatitis. The complaint herein does not seek recovery under the theory of negligence. A leading case in this field, Perlmutter v. Beth David Hospital, 308 NY 100, 123 NE2d 792, pointed out that the main object sought to be accomplished by the hospital in that case was the care and treatment of the patient and that the supplying of blood by the hospital was entirely subordinate to its paramount function of furnishing trained personnel and specialized facilities in an endeavor to restore plaintiff’s health. That the furnishing of blood by a hospital is an adjunct to the contract for services and not a sale was similarly held in Koenig v. Milwaukee Blood Center, Inc., 23 Wis2d 324, 127 NW2d 50; Goelz v. J. K. and Susie L. Wadley Research Institute and Blood Bank (Tex Civ App), 350 SW2d 573 (1961). In Dibblee v. Dr. W. H. Groves Latter-Day Saints Hospital, 12 Utah2d 241, 364 P2d 1085, the court said, p 243: “We do not say that hospitals should be immune from negligence, but we think they should not be strapped with an insurability of blood purity, absent negligence. ... To conclude otherwise could lead to the unhappy and unfortunate conclusion that such institutions, of necessity, might require the patient (perhaps unconscious) to bring with him his own transfusion of blood.” Section 1606 of the California Health and Safety Code reads: “The procurement, processing, distribution or use of whole blood, plasma, blood products and blood derivatives for the purpose of injecting or transfusing the same or any of them, into the human body is not a sale but the rendition of a service.” The State of Arizona in its Statutes, section 36-1151, Public Health and Safety, and in the case of Whitehurst v. American Nat. Red Cross, 1 Ariz App2d 326, 402 P2d 584, follow the philosophy expressed in the Perlmutter case. In Suvada v. White Motor Co., 32 Ill2d 612, 210 NE2d 182, our Supreme Court, 621, noted that the views “herein expressed coincide with the position taken in 402A of the American Law Institute’s Revised Restatement of the Law of Torts” and calls attention to the fact that the section provides: “(1) One who sells any product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property is subject to liability for physical harm thereby caused to the ultimate user or consumer, or to his property, if “(a) the seller is engaged in the business of selling such a product, and . . . .” Each of the cases which has sprung from the doctrine of strict tort liability has dealt with a commercially prepared for profit product. Blood, the essence of life has come to us from Him who created that life. Comment “k” in the Restatement of the Law (Second) Torts, § 402A indicates that: “There are some products which, in the present state of human knowledge, are quite incapable of being made safe for their intended and ordinary use.” The authors of the comment conclude that: “The seller of such products, again with the qualification that they are properly prepared and marketed, and proper warning is given, where the situation calls for it, is not to be held to strict liability for unfortunate consequences attending their use, merely because he has undertaken to supply the public with an apparently useful and desirable product, attended with a known but apparently reasonable risk.” The defendant has not placed any reliance upon the doctrine of charitable immunity. The furnishing by a hospital of blood to a patient, through transfusion, is not a sale of the blood but is incidental to the services for which the patient has contracted. The trial judge was right and the judgment should be affirmed.