Court Opinion

ID: 9587277
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:20:31.685715+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:11.912460
License: Public Domain

Russell, Judge,
concurring specially. The majority opinion holds that a physician is not negligent in failing to inspect the work of administrative staff hospital personnel where the performance of such tasks does not involve the exercise of medical skill or experience, but courts cannot decide as a matter of law which of the interrelated functions of the physician and the hospital involve such skills and which do not. I therefore feel the need to erect a caution signal lest this decision be taken as making such a distinction as a matter of law rather than of fact.
The case is here simply on the sufficiency of the pleadings. In analagous fact situations, a pleader may allege negligence against a physician of a primary nature based on malpractice or based on ordinary negligence, or he may allege negligence of a secondary nature amounting to either of the above in failing to anticipate and guard against the negligence of another. In the first instance, malpractice, the facts must show that the negligence consists in failing to “bring to the exercise of his profession a reasonable degree of-care and skill.” Code § 84-924; Fincher v. Davis, 27 Ga. App. 494 (5) (108 SE 905). This form of *76negligence, being a medical question, requires for its proof the testimony of medical experts (Shea v. Phillips, 213 Ga. 269 (2), 98 SE2d 552). Likewise, proper pleading requires, not a lay conclusion that the act was negligent, but sufficient factual averments to sustain the premise that the conduct is equivalent to a lack of legally required care and skill; otherwise the petition is not good even against general demurrer. Bryan v. Grace, 63 Ga. App. 373 (Id) (11 SE2d 241). This petition contains no allegation that the physician’s act of omission is a failure to exercise such care and skill, and contains no facts on which such inference could properly be drawn as against general demurrer.
The question of ordinary negligence is self-evident: it involves an act so obviously careless as to be apparent as negligence not only to the expert but to the lay jury. It may be pleaded as such and proved without the aid of expert testimonj'-. Caldwell v. Knight, 92 Ga. App. 747 (89 SE2d 900). No such negligence is alleged here.
The petition attempts to charge only that the defendant, by failing to inspect functions performed by hospital personnel, failed to anticipate and guard against the negligence of the latter, but it fails to allege that a surgeon under the facts described would have any duty to make such inspection or to show that any facts exist sufficient to raise such a duty.
Granted that inspection of the incubator might have saved the infant plaintiff from harm resulting from the negligence of another, the failure to inspect, like any other act resulting in injury, is not negligence unless it also involves the breach of a duty which the actor owes to the plaintiff. Central of Ga. R. Co. v. Griffin, 35 Ga. App. 161 (132 SE 255); Southern R. Co. v. Liley, 75 Ga. App. 489 (43 SE2d 576). “Knowledge of the facts out of which the duty arises is an essential element for consideration in determining whether one . . . has been guilty of negligence.” Norris v. Macon Terminal Co., 58 Ga. App. 313 (198 SE 272). This petition as amended shows no duty on the part of the defendant surgeon in the exercise of reasonable professional skill to supervise, check, and inspect the concealed dangerous position of the infant in the incubator. It fails to show knowledge by him of any facts from which such duty would arise. It fails to allege *77even that the defendant knew of the pre-heating bulb not controlled by the thermal switch on the outside of the incubator, but on the contrary affirmatively states that the hospital negligently covered it from view “so as to prevent Dr. Patterson from readily observing the conditions.” The clear inference is that the defendant had no original duty to place the infant in the incubator, had no knowledge that the hospital had been negligent, and was apprised of no facts knowledge of which would impose a duty on him to anticipate and therefore guard against such negligence. I accordingly concur in the judgment of affirmance.