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D.P. v. Wrangell General Hospital5/19/2000
volved a wrongful death action by the widow of a suicide victim who had jumped through an unbarred second story window of a hospital. The court concluded that the case supported instructions on both ordinary negligence and medical malpractice. Issues relating to improper medical diagnosis and chemotherapy treatment required an instruction on the professional standard of care. But the court concluded that an instruction on ordinary negligence was appropriate on the question of whether it was negligent to allow the decedent, who was depressed and had previously slashed his wrists, to wander freely around a hospital where there were no bars on the windows.
The defendants unpersuasively rely on Nally v. Grace Community Church of the Valley to distinguish Meier. In Nally, a young man who received informal pastoral counseling committed suicide. Nally simply declined to extend a duty of care "to personal or religious counseling relationships in which one person provided nonprofessional guidance to another seeking advice and the counselor had no control over the environment of the individual being counseled."
In view of the numerous authorities holding that a jury may readily determine whether patients known to be a risk to themselves have been adequately supervised, we hold that D.P.'s claims do not raise "strict" medical malpractice issues requiring expert testimony. Whether the hospital exercised reasonable care in supervising D.P. represents a factual question for the jury's resolution under an ordinary negligence framework. We therefore hold that it was error to require D.P. to present expert testimony regarding the hospital's alleged breach of its duty of care.
B. It Was Error Not to Let D.P.'s Case Go to the Jury.
D.P. contends that the superior court should have allowed the jury to consider the testimony of Dr. Schoettle and lay witnesses, in determining the issue of breach.
The defendants respond that no reasonable juror could have found that the defendants were negligent. They emphasize that the hospital is not a psychiatric hospital and lacks "any locked or secure patient facilit , rooms or wards." The defendants also stress that the standard of care did not require "constant observation." They argue that D.P. conceded both that the nurses had flexibility in implementing the physician's orders and that all except Hansen used reasonable care in observing D.P. They further note that Hansen discovered D.P.'s absence within five minutes.
The issues raised by the defendants concerning their use of reasonable care in supervising D.P. warrant resolution by a jury. D.P.'s pleadings and proposed jury instructions raise ordinary negligence issues. Drawing all inferences in favor of D.P. as the non-moving party, reasonable minds might differ as to whether the hospital's efforts to supervise D.P. were adequate in view of her known delusional condition. We conclude that the case should properly go to the jury under a theory of ordinary negligence.
C. The Defendants' Interrogatory Answer Is Admissible to Show the Existence of a Duty of Care.
D.P. argues that the superior court erred by refusing to characterize the defendants' interrogatory answer as an admission of both the existence of a duty and the breach of that duty. Specifically, D.P. asserts that the court erred by labeling this evidence as "discovery" rather than "proof," arguing that it should have been "weighed in the analysis of defendants' motion for a directed verdict."
Civil Rule 33(c) provides that answers to interrogatories "may be used to the extent permitted by the rules of evidence." The defendants' answer in the present case bears directl
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