Court Opinion

ID: 9641788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:40:25.564476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:38.438592
License: Public Domain

Peck, J.
Concurring in part and dissenting in part. I concur with the majority on the issues relating to informed consent, the hospital, and the pharmacy. I agree also that the charge to the jury on informed consent was erroneous because it embodies irrelevant assumption of risk language. I disagree strongly, however, that the charge as given constitutes reversible error. In my view it is most unfortunate that plaintiff is to be given “another bite of the apple,” and the physician subjected to further travail because of a minor error which is highly technical at best. The possibility of the charge having “confused” the jury is so remote and improbable as to be virtually nonexistent. Accordingly, I am compelled reluctantly to dissent from the reversal of the jury’s verdict in favor of the physician on the medical negligence count.
First, plaintiff failed to object to the irrelevant part of the charge before the case was submitted to the jury as required by V.R.C.P. 51 (b). This Court has ruled on numberless occasions that only those claims relating to jury instructions which are raised in the trial court will be considered on appeal. A failure to do so “constitutes a waiver of the claim of error.” State v. Joyce, 189 Vt. 638, 640, 433 A.2d 271, 272-73 (1981); McCrea v. State, 138 Vt. 517, 520, 419 A.2d 318, 319 (1980). I do not understand why the majority has failed to apply this sound and well-established rule, and has created in its place, relying on what I view as thin if lengthy rationalizing, a legal specter that will serve as a precedent and come back to haunt us. The majority opinion does recognize the rule, but thereupon departs from it. I believe this departure will require some uncomfortable if not embarrassing explaining away in future cases.
I disagree strongly with the majority view that the instruction may have confused the jury by “overlapping” the negligence and informed consent issues. The negligence count related very clearly throughout to the prescription of Flagyl, not to whether plaintiff gave her informed consent to the treatment. As I read the court’s instructions, the majority’s argument exaggerates their possible impact beyond any reasonable likelihood of fact. In my view the conclusion is *316reached through a labored rationalization, seeking to accomplish what the majority views as the ends of justice. I am apprehensive, however, that such an admittedly desirable result in any litigation is not being served here.
Assuming, for purposes of argument however, that the majority is correct in postulating a thoroughly bewildered jury, it concludes that when such a possibility emerges, “all bets are off”; all rules are out the window. A party then has no further responsibilities to object, or take any other steps to afford the court an opportunity to correct an error. He may sit back and do nothing, or rely on some vague, broad, and subsequent action, and still preserve the question for review in the event the verdict is not to his liking. In effect, I believe the claim is presented here for the first time, and the claimed error is far from being so glaring or egregious to justify our sua sponte review, particularly where, in doing so, we are treating plaintiff with an exception to our timely-objection rule.
Even errors of constitutional magnitude may not be for consideration on appeal if not raised below, Cleveland v. Department of Employment Security, 138 Vt. 208, 211, 414 A.2d 1157, 1159 (1980), and this is so even in criminal cases, State v. Patnaude, 140 Vt. 361, 368, 438 A.2d 402, 404 (1981), where the rights of a person accused of a crime are rigidly protected. It is, therefore, all the more difficult to comprehend the radical departure from these fundamentals by the majority. The rationale escapes me entirely.
Secondly, whatever error there was in charging the jury, it was manifestly harmless within the meaning of V.R.C.P. 61. The jury found the defendant physician was not negligent in prescribing Flagyl. How then can it possibly be said that the jury was confused or misled by the assumption of risk language? It is as obvious as Cyrano’s nose that the jury never even reached comparative negligence or assumption of risk, let alone having been confused by the latter. Only if there had been a finding of negligence in the first instance would comparative negligence have entered the picture, and only in that case might there have been some arguable possibility of confusion with assumption of risk, as remote and speculative as even that would be in this case. But the ultimate irony of this argument, it seems to me, lies in the fact *317that, assuming confusion did result, it could have worked only in favor of the plaintiff, since it would have provided broader grounds on which to base a finding of negligence by adding informed consent as an element. Very clearly, in my view, plaintiff has failed totally to show the slightest degree of prejudice resulting from this most trivial and irrelevant of errors; the burden was upon her to do so. Paradis v. Kirby, 138 Vt. 524, 528, 418 A.2d 863, 865 (1980).
Further, the majority, for no reason apparent to me, has turned away from our obligation to affirm the result reached in the trial court when it is reasonably possible, and it is certainly more than just that here. Appellate courts traditionally go to some lengths to affirm the results reached below, if it is reasonably possible to do so. Rarely, however, in my experience, do courts go to the tenuous lengths represented by the majority position here to accomplish a reversal when an affirmance is, in my judgment, clearly called for, and the more obvious and direct. When it becomes necessary to protest too much, the validity of the result is at least suspect and should be examined carefully.
The majority has elected to raise an error (not attributable in any way to the defendant affected thereby), which I view as trivial and nonprejudicial, to the level of reversible error, thereby giving plaintiff another roll of the dice. I cannot sit idly by and countenance, without comment, a majority view which I consider to be palpably and egregiously wrong under some of our own most fundamental and firmly established rules of appellate review. I would affirm the judgment in favor of the defendant physician on the negligence count.