Court Opinion

ID: 9623281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 06:30:49.946267+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:27.942893
License: Public Domain

Smith, Judge,
dissenting.
A physician’s failure to obtain appropriate consent before discontinuing resuscitative efforts is reprehensible and actionable through a claim for medical malpractice. Plaintiff initially pursued such a claim but later chose to dismiss it. A wrongful death action will not lie, however, because the facts and issues involved in this case are controlled by Dowling v. Lopez, 211 Ga. App. 578 (440 SE2d 205) (1993), authored by the author of the majority in this case. The language in Dowling is unequivocal: “Neither [the wrongful death statute], nor any other provision in Georgia’s wrongful death statutes provides for recovery where a defendant’s wrongful act or negligence did not result in death.” (Emphasis supplied.) Id. at 579-580. In this case, plaintiffs failed to point to evidence that defendant’s intentional acts proximately caused the child’s death, or evidence “showing to any reasonable degree of medical certainty that the patient’s death could have been avoided.” Id. at 580.
Strangely, Dowling seems to have been ignored by the majority, even though the author of the majority also authored Dowling. Apparently, the majority attempts to distinguish Dowling by characterizing the doctor’s acts here as intentional. In truth, the facts in Dow-ling came far closer to establishing the existence of proximate cause than those in this case.4 A wrongful death action nonetheless was not *690viable there. A reading of the precise language in Dowling shows that any distinction between intentional and negligent acts is immaterial. Simply characterizing the doctor’s act as an intentional tort is not enough to transform the action into a viable one for wrongful death.
Decided December 5, 1995
Reconsideration denied December 20, 1995.
Sullivan, Hall, Booth & Smith, John E. Hall, Jr., T. Andrew Graham, for appellant.
George H. Connell, Jr., for appellees.
To allow the wrongful death action to proceed ignores and implicitly overrules the plain language of Dowling. I agree with Judge Andrews that Dowling “should be forthrightly overruled” if that case is no longer the law. The trial court erred in denying summary judgment to defendant.
I am authorized to state that Presiding Judge Birdsong and Judge Andrews join in this dissent.

 Plaintiffs have pointed to no evidence that the life of the child would have been substantially prolonged. There was testimony that the premature child was “clinically dead” or *690“was in the process of dying” when resuscitation efforts were discontinued. In Dowling, which involved the negligent failure to diagnose cancer, a surgeon testified that he had treated patients with symptoms similar to those of the decedent who had lived for six to eight years, and even longer. Id. at 580. This Court nevertheless found that no evidence existed that the misdiagnosis proximately caused decedent’s death so as to authorize damages under the wrongful death statute. Id. at 581.