Court Opinion

ID: 9849407
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 04:39:50.311654+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:23.492641
License: Public Domain

Deen, Chief Judge,
dissenting.
The plaintiff in this case has sustained a wide variety of separate traumatic injuries. A piece of metal was wedged in his cornea on one occasion; over 200 stitches were required from an automobile accident on another occasion, after which he removed the sutures himself within 7 to 9 days after he was stitched up; and in the case sub judice pieces of glass from a broken vase were wedged in his hand.
In his own words: "Q. Have you ever been treated on an outpatient basis at a hospital prior to August of’74? A. Yes. Q. For what problem? A. In Houston. I had a splinter or piece of metal wedged in my, or lodged in my cornea. And had to have that removed. I — I guess I’ve had a normal amount of cuts and abrasions and Tetanus shots that have been required in the course of — I don’t really *782recall specific instances. . . Q. When you were — What type psychology did you study? A. Behavioral psychology. Q. Did that involve running rats— A. Yes. Q. Did you have occasion to perform any sort of little procedure on a rat where you had to use sutures? A. I have assisted in surgery on cats — Q. Okay. A. — in physiological psychology. Q. Did you have occasion to do any suturing? A. No. Q. Had you seen any suturing done? A. Yes. Q. How much suturing had you seen done? A. I don’t know. I’ve seen, I guess, quite a bit on myself. I had a couple of hundred stitches in me from my automobile accident, as I say. Referring back to the physiological lab situation and surgery, I’d seen a number of — of implantations in cranial areas and — Q. Had you ever seen any sutures removed during those of — experiments or — A. I have seen them removed subsequent to those, yes, surgery. Q. So you weren’t afraid to take out the suture yourself? A. No. Q. And you didn’t feel it necessary to see a doctor for that? A. No. Q. When did you take them out? A. I guess about seven to nine days after the — the time I had it stitched up. Q. When you took the sutures out was the wound closed and healed? A. Yes.”
We are bound by the whole court case of Parker v. Vaughan, 124 Ga. App. 300, 303 (183 SE2d 605), specially limiting the notion of a continuing medical tort in cases where the surgeon affirmatively inserts the foreign body, such as in this case, a steel arterial clamp, without later removing this object from the body. "We specifically wish to make it clear that our holding here is limited to causes of action in which a surgeon negligently leaves a foreign object in the body of his patient.”
To extend and broaden this one exception and make it applicable to the statute of limitations set forth in Code Ann. § 3-1103 would justify subjecting this court to a double standard criticism espoused by Judge Eberhardt and Judge, now Justice Hall, in the dissent on page 304: "I am unable to justify the establishment of one standard as to the commencement of the running of the statute of limitation in a malpractice action against an attorney and another standard to be applied to a malpractice action against a doctor.”
It is apparent that Code Ann. § 3-1103 codified this *783single exception announced in the majority opinion in this case. In my opinion, we should affirm this sole limitation and not permit erosion in this area toward one of imposing total liability.
Assuming arguendo that this court’s ratio decidendi in Clark v. Memorial Hospital of Bainbridge, 145 Ga. App. 305 (243 SE2d 695), should have excluded ascertainment of the legislature’s intent in enacting Code § 3-1103, relating to a piece of metal in the leg of the injured party, nevertheless, even if dictum, the rule evolved therein appears to be consistent with Parker, supra, with the newly adopted Code section, as well as with sound principles of responsibility relating to equity and justice.
It is one thing to place a substantial burden on a surgeon who has made an incision and thereafter affirmatively left a sponge or clamp in the body of his patient after stitching up the wound. This is understandably a reasonable inception of a stronger unlimited liability concept on the medical practitioner to the extent it creates a continuing tort and tolls the statute of limitations until the object is discovered. It may be argued that this is a use of the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur. It is quite different to implant and extend this stronger unlimited liability concept to include literally thousands of medical practitioners who everyday deal with cuts, bruises and stitches. This would require a monumental new medical approach of meticulous, detailed documentation and thorough expensive and extensive x-rays of the precise area of treatment and possibly all surrounding, peripheral and distant parts of the body in which some object "may be left.” This singles out and punishes the medical profession with an unequal unconscionable burden of potential liability while mistakes and things undone by the legal and other professions would be covered, protected and insulated through the passage of time.
Designation of the extent as to medical liability ultimately becomes a philosophical question based either on consideration of first principles of formalism or pragmatic utilitarianistic realism. Philosopher R. J. Rushdoony provides distinctions between three concepts of medical liability: total liability, unlimited liability and *784limited liability. He states: "Total liability is an untenable idea for man. It ascribes to man powers which are beyond man, and it places an impossible burden on medical practice.. . The idea of unlimited liability means that I am completely responsible where I have responsibilities, to the reasonable limit of human ability. Thus, if I, through my negligence, am responsible for an accident, I am fully liable for the accident I have caused... It is significant that, at the same time that malpractice suits have arisen, in the 1930’s and especially since 1950, environmentalism has also flourished. Environmentalism holds that we are a product of our environment; if Johnny is delinquent, his home, community, church, and school are to blame. Man is assumed to be a product instead of a producer, and responsibility is accordingly shifted from the individual to the environment... As areas of the United States most readily adopted in education and everyday life the environmentalist philosophy, they also adopted a limited liability philosophy, and a proneness to malpractice suits set in. Environmentalism means at best limited liability, and, in its extreme no liability by the individual: someone else or something else, the environment as a totality is to blame. The more environmentalism flourishes, the more readily total liability is ascribed to the environment.”1
"Environmentalism” and "determinism” eliminate the "free will” concept of responsibility for acts of right and wrong — fault and no fault. "Psychiatrists advance the theory of pre-determined choice of the individual — called 'determinism.’ ” Shirley v. State, 149 Ga. App. 194, 201 (253 SE2d 787). Ironically plaintiff’s profession is physiological behavioral psychology. The behaviorist believes in controlling the individual by scientifically controlling his environment, by rote in the same manner as Pavlov’s dogs. "Basic research in the science of behavior is essentially manipulative; the experimenter arranges conditions under which a subject behaves in a *785given way, and in doing so he controls behavior.”2 Leading behaviorial psychologist B. F. Skinner has stated: "The control of behavior is an intricate science into which the average mother could not be initiated without years of training. . . Home is not the place to raise children.”3
In my opinion, this court should not judicially extend through interpretation an all encompassing doctrine of almost total liability by requiring medical practitioners to have the duty to remove all foreign objects in their patients’ bodies, even if they or the patients are unaware of its existence, or did not themselves leave them or place them therein. The doctor may have been negligent for not taking X-rays, as a lawyer may be negligent for failure to perform — but the statute should run on both, equally, except for the one limitation as previously discussed. The trial judge properly granted summary judgment to the defendant predicated on the statute of limitations.
I am authorized to state that Judge Birdsong and Judge Underwood join in this dissent.

R. J. Rushdoony, "The Meaning of Liability,” Medical Report No. 3 (Chalcedon, P. O. Box 158, Vallecito, Calif. 95251).

B. F. Skinner, About Behaviorism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974).

B. F. Skinner, Walden Two.