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Budding v. SSM Healthcare System5/30/2000
Appeal From: Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, Hon. David C. Mason
Opinion Vote: AFFIRMED. Price, C.J., Limbaugh, White, Wolff and Benton,
JJ., concur; Covington, J., not participating.
Opinion:
Denise Budding sued SSM Healthcare System (Hospital) for personal injuries arising from defectively designed Vitek proplast teflon temporomandibular joint implants. Budding had the implants inserted at the Hospital and proceeded on a theory of strict product liability. The jury rendered a verdict in favor of the Hospital, and the trial court entered judgment accordingly. Budding appealed. Following opinion by the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, the case was transferred here. This Court has jurisdiction. Mo. Const. art. V, sec. 10. The judgment of the trial court is affirmed.
I.
This Court reviews facts in a light favorable to the verdict. Bell v. May Dep't Stores Co., 6 S.W.3d 871, 873 (Mo. banc 1999). As a teenager, Budding began to experience pain in her jaws. Eventually her condition worsened, leading to headaches and difficulty eating. In 1983 Budding visited Dr. Kenneth Rotskoff who diagnosed her with temporomandibular joint disease. In order to treat her condition, Dr. Rotskoff scheduled Budding for surgery in May 1984 at the Hospital. During the procedure, he concluded that it would be impossible to rebuild Budding's joint and Vita teflon implants would be necessary to correct her problem. At that point, Dr. Rotskoff obtained the implants from the inventory the Hospital had ordered and provided at his request. After selecting the implants, he sized and surgically inserted them. The Hospital never billed Budding for the devices.
Following the surgery, Budding's condition improved. She was able to return to work, perform household chores, eat solid food and lead a fairly normal life. An occasional headache and minimal pain were the only symptoms that persisted after she received the implants. However, in 1990, Budding again started to suffer from severe pain. She again contacted Dr. Rotskoff. He examined her and recommended x-rays be taken. Then, in March 1991, he sent Budding a letter requesting her to come in for an examination and informing her of an FDA warning about the safety hazards posed by the implants.
Finally, in April 1993 Budding decided to schedule surgery to remove the implants. During the operation, Dr. Rotskoff discovered a giant cell tumor and found one of the implants had fixated to the base of Budding's skull. As he tried to remove this implant, part of the skull broke off leaving a hole in the floor of Budding's temporomandibular joint. The hole resulted in a cerebral spinal fluid leak which entered the joint through the new hole. At that point, a neurosurgeon was called in to patch the leak. Due to these unexpected complications, Dr. Rotskoff was only able to remove one of the implants. Budding required additional surgery to have the other implant extracted.
Dr. Rotskoff scheduled Budding for the additional operation three weeks later on April 30, 1993. Between the surgeries, she experienced severe pain, suffered facial nerve weakness, facial numbness, bite-joint pain, hearing impairment, pain in the side of her head, heat sensations on her face and seizure-like episodes. The second operation proceeded relatively well, permitting Dr. Rotskoff to remove the remaining implant without any additional complications. While recovering from this procedure, Budding again suffered similar pain and sensations to those experienced following the previous surgery.
In October 1995, Budding sued the Hospital on a theory of strict liability for using what sh
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