Court Opinion

ID: 9525069
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 02:59:41.374169+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:12:46.955493
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE HALL, dissenting: The majority says that there is insufficient evidence of proximate cause and that a judgment notwithstanding the verdict should have been entered in this matter. I respectfully disagree and therefore dissent from the holding of the majority. The majority recites, yet ignores, the rigorous standard that must be met before a judgment may be entered not withstanding the verdict. While acknowledging that the issue of proximate cause is ordinarily one for the jury, the majority chooses to substitute its judgment for that of the jury in this case. When a plaintiff comes to a hospital with an existing undiagnosed medical condition, and while in the care of the hospital is negligently treated, the question of whether the defendant’s negligent treatment is a proximate cause of the plaintiffs ultimate injury is ordinarily one of fact for the jury. Holton, 176 Ill. 2d at 107, 679 N.E.2d at 1207. The evidence is that the plaintiffs decedent died as a result of an undiagnosed urinary tract obstruction. Doctors Leslie and Hancock testified that without the obstruction being “relieved,” the decedent had a zero chance of survival. Had the obstruction been relieved, the plaintiff’s decedent had a 40% to 60% chance of survival. The defendants did not remove the obstruction. The plaintiffs decedent died. The plaintiff is critical of the failure to call in a urologist or an interventional radiologist; the failure to order abdominal tests; and the failure to transfer the plaintiffs decedent to the intensive care unit, all of which were deviations from the standard of care. The majority opines that the jury is left to speculate about what a urologist or an interventional radiologist would have done to remove the obstruction or what the treatment would have been. However, the instant case differs from Aguilera in this important respect. In Aguilera, the expert doctors testified that a prompt CT scan should have been ordered but that, had it been done, they did not know for sure what treatment it would have prompted without a consultation. Aguilera, 293 Ill. App. 3d at 974-75, 691 N.E.2d at 6. In the instant case, Doctors Leslie and Hancock testified that the obstruction had to be relieved for the plaintiffs decedent to have a chance of survival. Their testimony that another doctor would have been called upon to perform the relief of the obstruction does not, as in Aguilera, fail to establish a basis for their opinions of proximate cause. The Aguilera experts did not know if surgical intervention should have been done even if the CT scan been done earlier; the experts in this case knew and testified what needed to be done to save the plaintiffs decedent: the obstruction had to be relieved. Susnis, also relied on by the majority, is equally distinguishable from the instant case. In that case, the medical experts presented no evidence linking the alleged deviations from the standard of care to the injuries suffered by the infant. Susnis, 317 Ill. App. 3d at 827. In the instant case, the medical experts testified that, had the plaintiffs decedent been properly diagnosed and the obstruction relieved, she could have survived. I do not believe that evidence as to the specific type of treatment which would have been used to relieve the obstruction is necessary to allow a jury to determine that a failure to render any treatment to relieve the obstruction is a proximate cause of the injury and subsequent death of the plaintiffs decedent. This is not a speculative “leap of faith” that the jury would be required to make, rather a conclusion drawn from the facts presented by the expert evidence. The jury is charged to determine, from the facts, proximate cause based upon the expert evidence. Holton, 176 Ill. 2d at 106-11, 679 N.E.2d at 1207-09; Suttle v. Lake Forest Hospital, 315 Ill. App. 3d 96, 733 N.E.2d 726 (2000). The jury in this case met its responsibility. We should not abrogate its verdict by requiring a multicolored road map when a simple black fine will do.