Court Opinion

ID: 9854303
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:04:48.609011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:00.564660
License: Public Domain

NOURSE, P. J.
I dissent.
The evidence of defendant’s negligence is irrefutable and the jury’s verdict rests on that evidence, uninfluenced, I believe, by any hypercritical theories of judicial platitudes. Hence this court cannot say that the instruction on the res ipsa loquitur doctrine was prejudicial.
But I am not satisfied that it was error. All the medical testimony showed that a fistula in the bladder caused by an hysterectomy operation was a very, very rare occurrence. One expert testified that in only one-tenth to two-tenths of one per cent did it happen. One testified that the incidence *291would be less than one per cent. One testified that a fistula had never happened in the approximately 300 hysterectomy operations performed by him. It is not reasonable in view of this evidence for this court to say that such injury was an assumed risk, or one that would have ordinarily occurred.
Furthermore I believe that the res ipsa instruction ivas properly given. Both Ybarra v. Spangard, 25 Cal.2d 486, 489 [154 P.2d 687, 162 A.L.R. 1258] and Farber v. Olkon, 40 Cal.2d 503, 510 [254 P.2d 520], adhere to the rule that the instruction is properly given where, from the facts in evidence, the jury could draw the inference that the injuries “were not such as ordinarily would have followed if due care had been exercised. ...” Where the undisputed testimony shows that a fistula would not be expected in more than one-tenth of one per cent of such operations and, in the practice of one of the witnesses, had not occurred in more than 300 of such operations, the jury might well have concluded that the injury here was one that would not have ordinarily followed if due care had been exercised.
A petition for a rehearing was denied July 2, 1953, and respondent’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied July 28, 1953.