Court Opinion

ID: 9854599
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 06:09:45.176585+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:23:10.245908
License: Public Domain

Deen, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I concur with Judge Benham’s dissenting position that summary judgment for the defendant doctor conflicts with this State’s “clear and unmistakable public policy favoring the preservation of life by those who are engaged in the medical profession.” Blackstone identified the three basic rights of man as life, liberty, and property, the most important of which is life. “The right of personal security consists in a person’s legal and uninterrupted enjoyment of his life, his *701limbs, his body, his health, and his reputation . . . Life is the immediate gift of God, a right inherent by nature in every individual; and it begins in contemplation of law as soon as an infant is able to stir in the mother’s womb.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries *125. The Supreme Court recognized this public policy favoring the preservation of life in Jefferson v. Griffin &c. Hosp. Auth., 247 Ga. 86, 90 (274 SE2d 457) (1981) (Hill, P. J., concurring), where, after weighing the right of a mother to practice her religion and refuse surgery upon herself against her unborn child’s right to life, the court found “in favor of her child’s right to live.”
I also am of the opinion that a physician/patient relationship resulted from the consultative examination in this case. The majority opinion’s contrary conclusion may observe the letter of the law, but sucks it dry of any spirit.
In the strictest sense of the term or the “classic medical malpractice” scenario, no physician/patient relationship may have arisen out of Mr. Peace’s submission to a consultative examination, because Mr. Peace did not seek out the defendant doctor for medical diagnosis or treatment and the doctor did not literally accept Mr. Peace as a patient. However, considering the realities of the situation, such a relationship existed in the instant case. Mr. Peace was trying to prove his entitlement to Social Security disability benefits. Although the consultative medical examination may have been required and paid for by the Georgia Department of Human Resources (DHR), from Mr. Peace’s perspective he was being examined by a doctor, and his reasonable expectation was that the doctor would advise him of any physical ailments discovered by the examination. The whole purpose of the examination, after all, was to ascertain and evaluate the physical impairment of Mr. Peace. Under these circumstances, who in the world would not have expected the doctor to tell him of any abnormal findings? It strikes this writer as particularly outrageous to hold that such an examining physician has no duty to inform the examinee of his discovery of a life-threatening cancer. Certainly no great inconvenience would be visited upon a physician by requiring him to inform an examinee of such a critical finding.
Under the majority opinion, the examining physician has a duty to report his findings to DHR’s Disability Determination Service (DDS), which in turn has a duty to notify an examinee’s attending physician of any previously undiagnosed condition that might require immediate treatment. The only one left uninformed is the one most affected by the information. In this specific case then, Mr. Peace’s interest in his health and life was sufficiently respected by the examining doctor’s reporting to the DDS that the chest X-ray showed “a peculiar fullness in both hilar areas which may reflect prominent hilar lymph nodes,” the significance of which understandably eluded the *702DDS bureaucrats charged with making the disability determination. This system makes wonderful sense if its purpose is to guarantee that all the Mr. Peaces rest in peace at the earliest possible opportunity.
Under the facts of this case, the realities of the situation, including the expectations of the examinee and the purpose of the examination itself, favor finding a physician/patient relationship and imposition of a duty on the examining physician to divulge to the examinee any abnormal findings. To hold otherwise denies a remedy for a wrong, fosters irresponsibility on the part of such consulting physicians, and may allow unwitting bureaucrats to deprive a human being of a fighting chance to live.
Application of a strict definition of a physician/patient relationship produces the intolerable result reached by the majority opinion. Adherence to the strict definition conceivably could even sanction the nondisclosure of tumor or tuberculosis, or whatever, discovered in school children during routine health screenings conducted by a school doctor or nurse. The preferable and more enlightened approach would allow for flexibility in determining the existence of a physician/patient relationship in such situations. Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent.