Court Opinion

ID: 9641698
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:38:13.720004+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:39.194169
License: Public Domain

STEPHENS, Associate Justice
(concurring) .
I concur in the result for the reason that, without objection by the plaintiff, the *878case was apparently submitted to the jury upon the theory of negligence causing physical injury only and not upon the theory of negligence causing mental anguish. And as pointed out in the opinion of the court, there was no evidence of physical injury, that is to say, the consequences of the operation performed by the layman in the case were no different, according to the testimony, from those where a similar operation is performed by a licensed practitioner of medicine. Negligence is, of course, not actionable without injury.
In my view, however, the defendant was guilty, under the evidence, of an actionable wrong which, if submitted to the jury, would have warranted a verdict awarding damages for mental anguish. As recognized in the opinion of the court, the duty of a physician is to exercise that reasonable degree of learning, skill and experience which is ordinarily possessed by others of his profession in similar communities. This obviously includes a duty to furnish professional, not lay, care. The plaintiff complained and proved that her body was exposed to the view and examination of a layman, and to an operation performed by such layman, all without knowledge on the plaintiff’s part that he was a layman rather than a physician. While there was no direct statement by the plaintiff in her testimony concerning mental anguish, I think a jury might reasonably draw inference from the fact that the plaintiff was exposed to view, examination and operation in the manner above described that she did suffer mental anguish, especially in view of the fact that she testified “she told the defendant she did not want a stranger giving her treatments who was not a doctor” — this in advance of the operation. The only doubt about legal recognition as an actionable wrong of the manner of treatment above described arises from the rule that in suits sounding in tort for negligence (or indeed in actions of contract) recovery cannot be had for mental suffering unless it accompanies physical injury. Southern Express Co. v. Byers, 240 U.S. 612, 36 S.Ct. 410, 60 L.Ed. 825. As under the evidence in this case there was no physical injury — although there was an invasion of the plaintiff’s person — it may be said to follow that no recovery for plaintiff’s mental anguish may be allowed. But the reason for the rule against allowing recovery for mental anguish unless it accompanies physical injury is, in the large, the danger of false claims, because a case would rest solely on the testimony of the plaintiff that mental suffering was experienced, with substantially no means of disproof of this by the defendant. Kester v. Western Union Tel. Co. (C.C.) 55 F. 603. But in my view this reason for the rule fails in respect of a case such as the present one, where the evidence of mental suffering comes not from testimony descriptive of such suffering as such but by way of inference from the fact of exposure of the plaintiff’s person to the view, examination and operation of a layman, of which fact, as above stated, there was ample proof. There is apparently but one case, De May v. Roberts, 46 Mich. 160, 9 N.W. 146, 147, 41 Am.Rep. 154, recognizing as actionable treatment similar to that to which the plaintiff was subjected here. There a woman exposed during childbirth to the presence and view of a lay male friend of the physician’s whom the latter had on a stormy night “fetched * * * along to help carry my things,” was not informed that this person was not a doctor. Apparently from the language of that court this was held actionable on the theory of tort for deceit causing mental anguish.
It is pertinent to comment further that the fact that no physical injury came to the plaintiff in this case was probably a happy accident rather than the result of any proper exercise of professional care, for while the lay person in question in the case, the district manager of a surgical supply house, might have acquired through practice in a laboratory or otherwise, for the purposes of sales demonstrations, skill in the use of the particular instrument so far as its actually touching and searing tissues is concerned, such person could hardly, for lack of general medical training and experience, be capable of meeting unexpectedly varied conditions or emergency consequences. Moreover, the defendant herself confessedly had no skill in the use of the instrument and inferential!y, therefore, no skill in dealing with the consequences of its use.