Court Opinion

ID: 9743827
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:45:31.83991+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:44.274697
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE REINHARD, dissenting: I respectfully dissent. The trial court committed reversible error when it instructed the jury pursuant to Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, Civil, No. 105.08 (2d ed. 1971) (hereinafter IPI Civil 2d). Where appropriate in a negligence action, the jury is normally instructed as to the plaintiff’s duty to exercise ordinary care. This instruction (Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, Civil, No. 10.03 (3d ed. 1991) (hereinafter IPI Civil 3d)) pertains to the question of whether the plaintiff has been comparatively or contributorily negligent. This is relevant in a negligence action because, under principles of contributory or comparative negligence, the plaintiff’s failure to exercise due care can be a contributing proximate came of his or her injury. (See Owens v. Stokoe (1986), 115 Ill. 2d 177, 183-84; Restatement (Second) of Torts §§463, 465 (1965).) IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08, on the other hand, is solely a damage-reducing instruction (Fisher v. Stager (1990), 201 Ill. App. 3d 480, 484), which is inappropriate where the real question is whether the plaintiff’s negligence was a contributing cause of a single injury. IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 “covers only special instances of a departure from the requirement that a patient use ordinary care” which are not adequately addressed by a comparative negligence instruction. (IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08, Comment.) In my opinion, IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 allows for mitigation of damages against a physician where the patient does not follow reasonable advice as to treatment or does not follow the physician’s instructions subsequent to the injury caused by the earlier malpractice of the physician. The instruction is not appropriate where, as here, the only question is one of which party’s conduct caused the injury: the physician’s malpractice, the plaintiff’s lack of due care, or some combination thereof. The Illinois Supreme Court Committee on Jury Instructions in Civil Cases recently published a revised instruction No. 105.08 which is essentially the same as the prior version. (See IPI Civil 3d No. 105.08.) The committee’s notes and comments to the revised instruction make it clear that the instruction does not apply where, as here, there is only one injury and the jury must determine what portion of the injury was proximately caused by the plaintiff’s comparative negligence. The notes on use for IPI Civil 3d No. 105.08 state that the instruction “applies only to those instances where the defendant claims that the plaintiff has failed to mitigate his damages by failing to use ordinary care in not seeking treatment or in not following the doctor’s instructions concerning treatment.” (IPI Civil 3d No. 105.08, Notes on Use.) Furthermore, the comment states that a patient’s duty to mitigate his damages arises “[o]nce an injury has occurred as a proximate result of medical negligence.” IPI Civil 3d No. 105.08, Comment. In this case, no injury occurred until plaintiff suffered his stroke. The asserted failure to follow instructions occurred before the stroke, and such evidence would properly be raised only to compare plaintiff’s negligence with that of defendants for purposes of determining the proximate cause of the stroke. Plaintiff’s failure to follow instructions could have been a contributing cause of his injury, but it did not aggravate an existing injury caused by defendants’ negligence. As the committee’s comment to IPI Civil 3d No. 105.08 cautions, “[i]t is important *** to distinguish between mitigation of damages and contributory negligence.” (IPI Civil 3d No. 105.08, Comment.) Here, the improper use of IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 confused plaintiff’s duty to mitigate damages with the separate question of whether his conduct was a contributing cause of the stroke. Moreover, the error here was highly prejudicial to plaintiff because defendants misused IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 by characterizing it in the context of liability in their final arguments to the jury. In this regard, defendants argued that IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 required plaintiff to follow the doctor’s instruction and that, if plaintiff did not do so, the resulting injury was not the doctor’s responsibility. The attorney for Dr. Hartmann argued, in pertinent part, as follows: “One instruction that I will direct your attention to — even if you were to assume that all of the doctors were wrong, every doctor took an incorrect history, every expert except Dr. Wehrmacher and Dr. Singer are wrong — plaintiff still could not be entitled to recover in this case because of his own conduct. * * * And you will be instructed that a patient is required to follow reasonable advice as to treatment and follow the doctor’s instructions, and if the patient doesn’t do it, it’s not the doctor’s responsibility. Now I know I am talking to a bunch of patients, potential patients, but I don’t think that the law is putting an unreasonable standard on somebody. If you have something wrong with you and you are worried about it, you don’t sit at home. If you are a child or a baby or you can’t think properly or — but a 36-year-old attorney, if everything that he says is true, he is still not entitled to recover in this case because he didn’t follow the advice of this doctor. And the advice was, hey, if you have a problem, come back. And then Dr. Chowattukunnel told him to come back in 10 days anyway. And he didn’t do it, and he admitted he didn’t do it.” (Emphasis added.) Later in counsel’s argument, he stated that he was “not even going to talk to [the jury] about damages.” Dr. Chowattukunnel's attorney also referred to IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 in final argument: “Further, the patient was instructed to come back. He didn’t do that. Mr. Johnson has informed you of the instruction that you will be given in that regard. In fact, he never bothered to contact Dr. [Chowattukunnel] again until after he had a stroke.” Thus, it is clear that the attorneys for both Dr. Hartmann and Dr. Chowattukunnel utilized IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08 on the issue of liability, not mitigation of damages. The most serious prejudice to plaintiff occurred when the trial court allowed defendants to withdraw their request for an instruction on plaintiff’s comparative negligence and denied plaintiff's request that such an instruction be given. The exclusion of the comparative negligence instruction, combined with the erroneous use of IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08, confused the question of liability. This effectively led the jury to assess responsibility for plaintiff’s injury entirely to one party or the other rather than assessing some proportion of fault to plaintiff and reducing damages accordingly under principles of comparative negligence. This constituted a defacto revival of contributory negligence as a bar to recovery and inevitably tainted the jury’s verdict. Because the trial court erred in giving the jury IPI Civil 2d No. 105.08, and because this error prejudiced plaintiff for the reasons stated above, I would reverse the judgment for defendants and remand the cause for a new trial.