Court Opinion

ID: 9602629
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:58:04.783642+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:02:05.405613
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE STEPHENSON,
dissenting.
*89I respectfully dissent. This case does not involve a mere “surgical intern” as in Lawhorne v. Harlan, 214 Va. 405, 405, 200 S.E.2d 569, 570 (1973), or a “fellow” in a research project as in Gargiulo v. Ohar, 239 Va. 209, 210, 387 S.E.2d 787, 788 (1990). Instead, the physician-defendant in the present case is a “board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist” in the employ of the Virginia Department of Health.
As recently as 1980, this Court, in a unanimous opinion, refused to grant governmental immunity to a neurosurgeon who was a full-time member of the faculty of the Medical School of the University of Virginia. James v. Jane, 221 Va. 43, 282 S.E.2d 864 (1980). In James, we stated the following:
At the point when the physician agrees to treat or operate on a certain patient, although his employment by the [Commonwealth] makes possible the arrangement, the relationship becomes the personal and confidential one of doctor and patient, not the Commonwealth . . . and patient. The physician owes his best professional efforts on behalf of the patient, and the patient expects, and has a right to expect, the same care and attention from the physician that he would receive if he were in a private hospital and the physician in private practice. The exercise by the attending physician of his professional skill and judgment in treating his patient, and the means and methods used, from the very nature of things, are not subject to the control and direction of others.
Id. at 50-51, 282 S.E.2d at 867-68.
I submit that the reasoning in James is as sound today as it was in 1980. I think it is unreasonable to suggest that the Commonwealth could, or should, exercise control over the doctor-patient relationship that existed in the present case. I agree, as the trial court found and the majority holds, that the Commonwealth has a substantial interest in providing “ ‘quality medical care’ ” to persons who are “ ‘economically unable to acquire those services in the private sector.’ ” To grant immunity for the negligent act alleged in the present case, however, discourages rather than encourages “quality medical care.”
For these reasons, as well as those stated in my dissent in Ohar, 239 Va. at 215-17, 387 S.E.2d at 791-92, I would deny Dr. Larsen’s plea of sovereign immunity.