Court Opinion

ID: 9662086
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:59:09.748531+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:36.782574
License: Public Domain

Spencer, J.,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion herein for the reason that I believe there is an issue of fact which presents a jury question.
The case comes to this court on the sustaining of defendant’s motion for summary judgment. As the major*8ity opinion says: “The plaintiff, for reversal, relies, on the contentions that there were genuine issues of fact on the propositions: (1) That the hospital was in exclusive control of the instrumentality or agency which caused, the infection, and (2) that the injury complained of would not have occurred in the ordinary course of things if those who had control of the instrumentality or agency had used proper care.”
A summary judgment is permissible only when a party is entitled to it as a matter of law, where it is clean what the truth is, and that no genuine issue remains for the jury. This, is not the situation herein.
There is evidence in this record from one of the surgeons that the infection could only have happened in surgery. In response to a question as to how that could be, he said: “ ‘Well, evidently it was an unsterile instrument.’ ” Regardless of the testimony of the hospital administrator that the surgeons had full and complete direction and supervision of the plaintiff as well as of processes maintained and employed by the hospital in the surgical room, it is a fact that members of the hospital staff prepare the surgical room before it is turned over to the surgeon. This necessarily must include the furnishing of sterile instruments.
I believe that res ipsa loquitur is applicable herein, and that the motion for summary judgment should not have been sustained.