Court Opinion

ID: 9687600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 16:38:47.902613+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:29.186573
License: Public Domain

AMUNDSON, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
The jury in this case returned a general verdict for the defendants. When reviewing a general verdict for the defendants in a medical malpractice action, this court held in Fjerstad v. Sioux Valley Hospital, 291 N.W.2d 786 (S.D.1980), as follows:
A verdict should be sustained and should not be set aside unless it is irreconcilably inconsistent or is so vague that its meaning is uncertain. The verdict of the jury may be construed in light of the pleadings, the issues made by the evidence and the jury instructions.... It is presumed that a jury understands and abides by the court’s instructions.... Even if the verdict is susceptible of two constructions, the construction that sustains the verdict must, be applied.
Id. at 788 (citations omitted).
At the conclusion of this hotly contested case, the jury was appropriately instructed that in a malpractice case it must first find that the defendants breached a recognized standard of care and was thereby negligent. If the jury finds the defendants to have been negligent, the jury next determines if the defendants’ negligence was the proximate cause of any injury to plaintiff's decedent in this case.
The record contains expert opinions from a witness for plaintiff opining that these defendants did, in fact, breach the standard of care in treating Eileen Schrader. It also includes witnesses for the defendants concluding that there was no breach of the standard of care. Therefore, an obvious jury question is involved in this case on the negligence issue in which the jury was called upon to decide. Since there were no special interrogatories for the jury to answer on this first issue, the verdict in this case is susceptible to an interpretation that the jury answered the negligence issue in the negative.
The rebuttal witnesses that Schrader desired to call were for the purpose of rebutting the “sudden death” defense propounded by the defense. This “sudden death” defense would obviously only come into play on the second issue the jury was called on to decide, namely, proximate cause. Under the record, it is impossible to determine whether or not the jury ever reached the proximate cause issue since, as previously stated, a no answer to the negligence issue means the jury stops there and need not even consider the second issue.
Under the unfortunate occurrence in this case, it would be easy to disregard precedent in this appeal, but in construing jury verdicts “a construction which sustains the [jury] verdict must be applied.” Bankwest, Inc. v. Valentine, 451 N.W.2d 732, 736 (S.D.1990). Therefore, I would affirm the jury verdict on issue one since I am unable to conclude that rebuttal witnesses would probably have changed the jury verdict.
I concur on issues two and three.