Court Opinion

ID: 9588405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:34:09.832303+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:00:58.707878
License: Public Domain

Judge BECTON
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I
In Cox v. Haworth, this Court, in an opinion I authored, declined the Coxes’ invitation “to impose a duty upon a hospital to properly inform and advise a patient of the nature of a medical procedure to be performed . . . when the patient [had been] admitted to the hospital for an operation under the care of his privately retained physician.” 54 N.C. App. 328, 331, 283 S.E. 2d 392, 394-95 (1981) (emphasis added). Cox is a summary judgment *330case, and it is distinguishable from the case sub judice. The Coxes forecasted no evidence of any duty the hospital had which would invoke the doctrine of corporate negligence. In Cox we were asked to determine if a court could impose such a duty on a hospital. In the case sub judice, we are asked to determine whether a court should instruct a jury regarding a duty which, the evidence shows, the hospital had imposed on itself.
Judicial enforcement of a duty that a hospital imposes upon itself is significantly different than judicial imposition of a new duty on a hospital. That a hospital can violate a duty it created and owed is clear from the following quote from Bost v. Riley:
The plaintiff in the present case has introduced evidence tending to show that the defendant surgeons failed to keep progress notes on Lee’s condition for a number of days in succession following the operation of 6 August 1974, in violation of a rule promulgated by Catawba. Catawba took no action against the surgeons for their violation. While this evidence is sufficient to show that Catawba may have violated the duty it owed to Lee to adequately monitor and oversee his treatment, plaintiff has offered no evidence to show that this omission contributed to Lee’s death.
(Emphasis added.) 44 N.C. App. 638, 648, 262 S.E. 2d 391, 397, disc. rev. denied, 300 N.C. 194, 269 S.E. 2d 621 (1980).
In the case before us, plaintiffs expert witnesses testified that defendant’s labor room nurses were required under the standard of practice for nurses with similar training and experience to assure, prior to any procedure, that the plaintiffs had been informed by their physician that the baby was in the footling breech position and of the relative risk of a vaginal delivery. One witness explained: “Assuring that the patient has had an explanation would be the responsibility of the nurse.” Moreover, plaintiffs presented evidence that in 1979 defendant hospital had a policy requiring labor and delivery room nurses to obtain the signature of patients on a hospital consent form before delivery. Believing that the foregoing evidence supported the instructions given by the trial court, I concur in the result reached on the informed consent issue.
*331II
A trial judge’s discretionary power is broad, but not unlimited. Hensley v. McDowell Furniture Co., 164 N.C. 148, 150, 80 S.E. 154, 155 (1913). And trial judges cannot insulate their orders setting aside jury verdicts from appellate review simply by cloaking their orders in the mantle of “passion and prejudice” and “insufficient evidence.” Appellate courts are required to look behind the conclusory statements of trial judges to determine whether trial judges have abused their discretion. Indeed, only after our Supreme Court combed the record as a whole in Worthington v. Bynum, 305 N.C. 478, 290 S.E. 2d 599 (1982) was the Court able to sustain the trial judge’s decision to set aside the verdict on account of excessiveness. In the case sub judice the trial judge cited nothing (and my review, as well as that of the majority, ante p. 18, reveals nothing) in the record or the conduct of the trial, to support a finding of passion and prejudice. Similarly, the trial judge did not indicate in what respect (and I have found none) plaintiffs’ evidence was insufficient to justify the jury award. Thus, believing that Worthington is distinguishable and that, in the case sub judice, the trial judge abused his discretion by nullifying the jury’s verdict, I dissent.