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Carney v. Tranfaglia3/26/2003
ground concerning what she told the jury about how a finding that Poretta had deliberately taken her life might bear on the jury's deciding whether any negligence by the defendant had caused Poretta's death. The shortcoming of the instruction is what it did not say. There was no elaboration that the jury might find, alternatively, that suicide was a foreseeable consequence, and that Dr. Tranfaglia, in treating his patient, had taken insufficient steps to ration her chloral hydrate so that she would not intentionally overdose.
The plaintiff, however, requested no amplification along those lines. On appeal, the plaintiff's claim of error is pitched solely on the basis that the judge unfairly introduced the possibility of suicide into the case at a late stage. In those circumstances, we do not make the deficiency in the instructions, on which we have remarked, the occasion for reversing the judgment. See and compare Pinshaw v. Metropolitan Dist. Commn., 33 Mass. App. Ct. 733, 735 n.3 (1992). We are satisfied that, in any event, as the case was presented, the possibility that Dr. Tranfaglia had let his patient have pills of chloral hydrate in a quantity from which she could and might overdose was squarely before the jury and the judge's instruction did not confuse the question.
4. Denial of motion for a new trial. The plaintiff's motion for a new trial was based on the same grounds that the plaintiff has urged for reversing the judgment. On the view we have taken of those grounds, there was neither error nor evidence of misunderstanding by the jury. The trial judge was, therefore, right to deny the motion for a new trial.
Judgment affirmed.
Order denying motion for new trial affirmed.
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