Court Opinion

ID: 9845725
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:26:59.172489+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:20.166722
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE COMPTON, with whom CHIEF JUSTICE CARRICO
joins, dissenting.
Because the plaintiff is armed with the verdict of a jury approved by the trial judge, the facts should be viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. When the evidence is considered in this manner, I am of opinion that all questions relating to primary negligence and proximate cause were jury issues. And, although *396the majority bypasses the negligence question relating to monitoring Eppling’s whereabouts, all the evidence on negligence furnishes the background for consideration of the issue of proximate cause.
In a thorough written opinion overruling defendant’s motion to set aside the verdict on the liability issues, the trial judge set forth some of the facts upon which she relied on the issue of primary negligence.
“Defendant kept Eppling in its home for adults with full knowledge of his medical condition, including his prior suicide threats. Hartman, the administrator, recognized a pattern in Eppling’s behavior that he had been progressively more delusional since before January 16, 1988. Hartman acknowledged that Southern Manor is not capable of taking care of someone who is suicidal. Hartman never communicated to Harris and Irving any information concerning Eppling’s prior suicidal threats. Once the decision was made to hospitalize Eppling, it was not communicated to Irving, no one stayed with Eppling until the hospitalization could be effected, and his departure from the premises was never even reported to the administrator. On the basis of the foregoing facts, a jury could reasonably find that defendant failed to exercise ordinary care for Eppling. Where the evidence is such that reasonable men might differ as to its effect, it is for the jury to say whether the defendant failed to exercise ordinary care for the plaintiff’s well being.”
I fully subscribe to this analysis of the evidence on that issue.
The trial judge likewise articulated her view of the evidence on the question of proximate cause and foreseeability.
“There existed sufficient evidence before the Court upon which a jury could have reasonably concluded that the negligence of the defendant in not hospitalizing Eppling sooner or in not monitoring his whereabouts while awaiting the warrant to hospitalize put in motion a natural and continuous sequence—Tippling leaving the home unattended, walking to the Wasena Bridge, and jumping to his death. From the evidence the jury could have concluded that absent the failure to hospitalize earlier or to monitor the whereabouts of Eppling the death would not have occurred.
*397“Defendant argues that Eppling’s injury was not reasonably foreseeable and relies upon the testimony of its expert witness, Dr. Brown, who testified that even a trained psychiatrist has difficulty predicting suicide. Yet Dr. Brown attributed a significance of about 2.5 on a scale of 10 to Eppling’s prior suicidal threats or ideations. When asked where on that scale he would be willing to take a chance with an individual’s life he responded, ‘double zero.’ A jury could have reasonably concluded that the defendant proximately caused Eppling’s injuries by taking that ‘2.5’ chance which their own expert testified should not have been taken; and, therefore, it was proper to submit the issue for their consideration.
“Furthermore, the precise injury sustained need not have been foreseeable. It is sufficient if an ordinary person should have, under the circumstances, foreseen that an injury might occur. . . . There was evidence from which the jury could conclude that the defendant should have foreseen possible injury to Eppling in the absence of hospitalization or monitoring, given his deteriorated condition, . . . Accordingly, there existed sufficient evidence regarding proximate cause for the matter to be submitted to the jury.”
I also endorse this treatment of the proximate cause issue.
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the trial court.
I have additional problems with the majority opinion. In the first place, I disagree that the plaintiff was required to produce expert testimony to establish a standard of care for these lay persons, not professionals, on the issue whether the defendant should have hospitalized Eppling sooner. The plaintiff did not charge the defendant with professional negligence in the malpractice sense. As the majority points out, the Home was a residential facility with no medically trained staff. The Home’s function was to provide nonmedical, administrative, routine care to safeguard a mentally ill person unable to care for himself. Yet the majority has decided that expert testimony of “specialized knowledge and skill, involving both the diagnosis of a patient’s illness and an assessment of its severity,” must be produced to evaluate the performance of defendant’s lay employees. I believe that the ability to make such evaluation lies within the range of common experience and common knowledge of lay jurors unaided by expert opinion.
*398In the second place, I have a more basic objection to the entire expert-witness discussion by the majority. In my view, it is wholly unnecessary to the opinion and amounts to pure dictum.
The majority rules in favor of the defendant on the merits and enters final judgment in defendant’s favor. This result is based on the idea that the record itself, without reference to the need for expert testimony, is “devoid of evidence from which the jury might have inferred that the Manor was negligent in failing to take such steps as a reasonably prudent lay person would have taken to secure Eppling’s hospitalization sooner.” The result is also based on the further idea that, assuming there was sufficient evidence of negligence, without reference to the need for expert testimony, to establish that defendant should have monitored Eppling’s whereabouts after the decision to hospitalize, “there was no evidence to support a finding of proximate cause.”
I submit that, under these circumstances, there is no necessity to proceed to consider the complaints of error by the party prevailing on appeal regarding evidentiary issues relating to negligence. If final judgment is to be entered for defendant, I would avoid discussion of this irrelevant matter; the majority should assume, without deciding, that expert testimony was not required.