Court Opinion

ID: 9635485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:52:05.441472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:28.384070
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Mb. Justice Benjamin B. Jones:
Although alleged, the case at bar in my opinion presents no evidence of any direct negligence on the part of Dr. Kaplan and Dr. Kaplan’s liability, if any, must be premised on the theory of vicarious liability. Stated otherwise, is Dr. Kaplan liable for malpractice under the doctrine of respondeat superior for an act of negligence which occurred, outside his presence and without his knowledge, during the preoperative procedure involved in the administration of an anesthesia?
Certain factual circumstances must be noted. Dr. Kaplan neither requested nor exercised any choice in the selection of any particular anesthesiologist to administer the anesthesia. Although Dr. Kaplan, as any other surgeon, was at liberty to select any anesthesiologist he so desired, he simply indicated to Dr. Stone, the Chief of the Department of Anesthesiology, that he wanted a general anesthesia administered and relied upon Dr. Stone’s professional competency for selection of the type of anesthesia and the person or persons to administer it. Such service was provided by the hospital and the compensation for such service would be billed by the hospital to the patient and would be paid by the latter directly to the hospital. The personnel *581of the Department were employed by, paid by and under the general control and direction of the hospital which had the sole power to dismiss such personnel.
When the incident occurred, as previously stated, Dr. Kaplan was not present nor was his presence required at that time and, while the injection and ensuing incident took place at approximately 9:45 a.m., Dr. Kaplan was unaware of it until approximately noon.
In his attempt to fasten liability on Dr. Kaplan, Rockwell relies on McConnell v. Williams, 361 Pa. 355, 65 A. 2d 243 and Yorston v. Pennell, 397 Pa. 28, 153 A. 2d 255. Both cases are clearly inapposite. In McConnell, supra, a surgeon was held liable for the negligent act of an intern who at the surgeon’s request and direction assisted at an operation and, while in the operating room, negligently performed a specific act which caused injury. In McConnell, supra, the controlling features were that the surgeon had requested the particular intern to assist him and the intern was then in the operating room under the direction and control of the surgeon. Yorston presented a situation where a resident surgeon sought the advice of the chief surgeon for the preoperative, surgical and postopera' tive treatment of a patient and the chief surgeon, without knowledge of the patient’s allergic background, prescribed a course of postoperative care which required the use of penicillin to which the patient had an allergy; after administration of this antibiotic, the patient suffered a very severe physical reaction for which the surgeon was held liable. Yorston is the only case in which this Court has held a surgeon liable for preoperative negligence on the part of a general employee of a hospital and the Court did so because, under the particular factual situation therein presented, it considered the negligent actor a subagent of the surgeon as well as an employee of the hospital.
*582In the case at bar, Dr. Kaplan neither prescribed nor was he advised of the nse of sodium pentothal; he did not administer it, was not present when it was administered and, in. fact, did not know of it until hours later. Moreover, he exercised no direction, control or authority over Drs. Stone and Jiminez, or Molnar, while in the induction room and he did not request any of them to administer this drug. Dr. Kaplan was simply using the hospital facilities and its personnel, a service for which Rockwell would be billed directly.
The sodium pentothal was administered, outside of Dr. Kaplan’s presence, in the induction room over which, to employ the language of McConnell, he was not the “captain of the ship”; over the personnel in that room — all hospital regularly employed persons— at that time only Dr. Stone was in command.
Rockwell urges that Dr. Kaplan was directly negligent in certain respects: (1) in that he failed to notice the blanched and pallid color of Rockwell’s arm; (2) in that he failed to look at the anesthesia record while Rockwell was in the operating room; (3) in that the presence of Rockwell’s left arm extended on and tied with gauze to an intravenous board should have placed Dr. Kaplan on notice of a mishap; (4) in that the combined and continuous presence of Dr. Stone, Dr. Jiminez and Molnar throughout the operation should have placed Dr. Kaplan on notice that a mishap or something untoward had taken place. Such arguments find no support in fact.
First, assuming that Rockwell’s left arm was still pallid and blanched when he was in the operating room, Dr. Kaplan’s failure to notice and observe such condition cannot be said to be negligence since Dr. Kaplan’s attention necessarily was directed to Rockwell’s right arm and there is no evidence of record to show that Dr. Kaplan during the operating process was in a position to see and observe Rockwell’s left arm. Second, *583the failure of Dr. Kaplan to examine the anesthesia record did not constitute negligence. Once scrubbed and rendered sterile for an operation, a surgeon’s movements must necessarily be limited and to require that he examine an unsterile anesthesia record would be foolhardy. Third, the fact that Rockwell’s left arm was tied with gauze to an intravenous board brought no notice of any mishap to Dr. Kaplan; the placement of the arm in such manner in the event that intravenous injections during the operative process became necessary is certainly neither unusual or extraordinary. Lastly, the combined presence of Dr. Stone, Dr. Jiminez and Molnar during the entire course of the surgery in itself was not of such probative value as to put Dr. Kaplan on notice of the occurrence of any mishap or accident. Dr. Kaplan might well have assumed that Dr. Stone was present with two of his students in furtherance of their training. Either standing alone or collectively, none of the above enumerated situations were of sufficient character to raise a red flag and put Dr. Kaplan upon notice that any mishap had occurred during the administration of the anesthesia.
The surgery performed by Dr. Kaplan bn November 11, 1955 was successful and entirely free of any negligent conduct on his part. There is not a scintilla of evidence of any direct negligence on Dr. Kaplan’s part sufficient to subject him to liability. On the other hand, neither Dr. Stone, nor Dr. Jiminez, nor Molnar were acting in an agency capacity for Dr. Kaplan at the time of the injection of the sodium pentothal. Under such circumstances, in my opinion, Dr. Kaplan could not be held liable upon any theory of respondeat superior and the judgment as to Dr. Kaplan should be reversed and judgment n.o.v. entered in his favor.
Mr. Justice Bell joins in this dissenting opinion.