Court Opinion

ID: 9570233
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:21:19.777325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:05:10.721812
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
concurring specially.
While I concur fully with the majority opinion, it should be added that what originally appeared to be a minor muscle shoulder pain when the patient entered the office could ultimately be determined by a jury to have been a punctured or collapsed lung ab initio. In other words, there might have been a collapsed lung preceding the subcutaneous injections of two syringes. Whether or not the injections caused the puncture or collapsed lung is an issue to be determined by the jury.
In reaching a verdict on the law and the evidence, the jury may use the general knowledge and experience which they possess in common with the rest of mankind. See Hilburn v. Hilburn, 163 Ga. 23 (3) (135 SE 427) (1926). In obscenity cases they can determine what community standards are even in the absence of expert testimony. In professional malpractice cases the court and jury must have expert testimony within the field of expertise regarding the standards so that the acts of the professional may be measured in determining exercise of reasonable due care and skill.
The general rule in medical malpractice cases remains that a plaintiff must produce some expert medical testimony of medical standards, and that defendant did not meet these standards in order to get a case to the jury; the common knowledge doctrine in malpractice cases is an evidentiary device rarely and narrowly utilized by the courts to remove that necessity of expert medical testimony so that the jury can again utilize their common knowledge as they generally do in non-malpractice cases. The courts rationalize that some case situations even in malpractice claims are so plain and palpable that the common knowledge and experience of the jury form a sufficient basis for the jury to determine the reasonableness of the defendant’s act.
The common knowledge doctrine merely allows submission of the case to the jury (and would authorize a verdict for the plaintiff). The jury, of course, could still resolve the question in favor of the defendant by considering the presumption of due care in his favor as well as other evidence submitted.
The common knowledge doctrine is closely related to that of res ipsa loquitur. The common knowledge doctrine usually involves a known act, e.g., while stitching up a patient’s cheek a physician pierces his eye with the needle, while res ipsa often is applied where it *660is unclear what the actual alleged negligent act was (but the injury is such that it (1) does not ordinarily occur in the absence of negligence, (2) is caused by agency within exclusive control of defendant, and (3) is not due to voluntary action of plaintiff). But that is certainly not an absolute distinction. One evidentiary difference is that, while the common knowledge doctrine results in the submission of the case to the jury, successful invocation of res ipsa not only gets the case to the jury but shifts the burden of persuasion to the defendant, requiring some explanation that the injury did not result from his negligence. Res ipsa thus would be of greater benefit to a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case. The latter evidentiary device has been sparingly used in Georgia but can require expert testimony to lay the foundation of probability that the injury is attributable to negligence. The reluctance of our courts to use this rule seems to be a fear of weakening of the finding of fault based theory of malpractice plus destruction of the presumption of due care of the professional. A key question is whether presumptions are negated when opposing inferences are advanced during the trial, or that presumptions only ultimately vanish in the jury room. Compare Floyd v. Colonial Stores, 121 Ga. App. 852 (176 SE2d 111) (1970), with Templeton v. Kennesaw Life &c. Ins. Co., 216 Ga. 770, 773 (119 SE2d 549) (1961). The writer here, in the former cited case dissented, taking issue with the quote in the majority opinion that presumptions may be looked on as the bats of the law, flitting in the twilight, but disappearing in the sunshine of actual facts. Presumptions, in my opinion, only disappear when the jurors consider they vanish, not before. If I am correct on the non-disappearance during a jury trial of presumptions until the jury believes they have vanished, then a presumption of due care, skill and diligence of a professional would not disappear even if the res ipsa doctrine is used in malpractice cases, hence the latter rule could be used consistently with fault versus no-fault and without doing harm to presumptions.
Professor Eaton in his well written article, “Res Ipsa Loquitur and Medical Malpractice in Georgia: A Reassessment,” 17 Ga. Law Rev. 33, 76 (1982), on this subject chides the court for paying lip service to, and our narrow use of, this available doctrine. “To put it more bluntly, medical defendants, as a class, are not deserving of any special dispensation from inferences of negligencé that may be logically drawn from the circumstances. One suspects, but cannot prove, that underlying the judicial condemnation of res ipsa loquitur in malpractice cases is the instinct to provide just such protection.” See Allrid v. Emory University, 166 Ga. App 130 (303 SE2d 486) (1983).
Both the common knowledge doctrine and res ipsa loquitur are *661evidentiary devices that would allow a case to go before the jury without the expert testimony when sanctioned by the court. Common knowledge is evidence of a fact to be found by the jury, while judicial notice on the other hand establishes a fact.
Judicial notice is a rule of evidence, and when a court takes judicial notice of some matter, that fact is established. It is usually stated that the court may, among other things, take judicial cognizance of matters of common knowledge and common experience among men. See Batson-Cook Co. v. Shipley, 134 Ga. App. 210 (214 SE2d 176) (1975). However, “[c]ourts should never take judicial cognizance of anything that is subject to be disproved.” Irwin v. Torbert, 204 Ga. 111, 125 (49 SE2d 70) (1948). In the latter case, a negligence action seeking damages for a death resulting from a fire in a hotel, the Supreme Court refused to take judicial notice that a vast majority of the hotels in the country at the time of the fire did not have fire doors, sprinkler systems, or fire alarm systems.
When courts notice certain matters of common knowledge, it is applied by instructing the jury to find facts of which he has judicial notice.
The case of Akridge v. Noble, 114 Ga. 949 (41 SE 78) (1902) involves leaving a sponge in the body after the wound was closed. The plaintiff had expert testimony in that case. This case deals with charges given to the jury. It is a holding that due skill is required from when the opening is made in the body until the opening is closed properly and all operational appliances have been removed. I do not read this case as necessarily requiring expert testimony, therefore, I do not believe our holding in the subject case is necessarily inconsistent with what was held in Noble, supra.