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BIDDLE v. SARTORI MEMORIAL HOSP.6/22/1994
This is an appeal from pretrial rulings and a defense verdict rendered in a medical malpractice action. Finding no error, we affirm.
The case stems from the tragic death of Sandra Biddle, a thirty-nine-year-old mother who became ill after eating a hot dog at a college football game during a parents' weekend celebration. Complaining of nausea, weakness, chest pains, and shortness of breath, she was rushed by ambulance to Sartori Memorial Hospital in Cedar Falls. There she was admitted as a possible cardiac patient. Following an examination by emergency room physician J. Douglas Watts, however, she was treated instead for gastroenteritis. Antacid and antinauseant medications were administered and gave some relief. By around 11:30 p.m. Sandra expressed a desire to return to her motel to sleep. She was discharged from the hospital with instructions to return if her condition worsened in any way. She died of heart failure approximately four hours later.
Plaintiff Thomas Biddle, Sandra's husband and administrator of her estate, sued Dr. Watts, the hospital, and the City of Cedar Falls (municipal owner of the hospital) for alleged negligence in Sandra's diagnosis and treatment. Prior to trial, Biddle reached a sizable settlement with Dr. Watts and his malpractice insurance carrier. Trial proceeded against the remaining defendants. After listening to four weeks of testimony, a jury returned a defense verdict. This appeal followed.
I. Adjudication of law points.
Biddle's settlement with Dr. Watts prompted a pretrial controversy over the hospital's remaining liability — if any — for the doctor's negligence, separate and apart from any independent acts of negligence that could be proven against the hospital or its staff. In a motion to adjudicate law points, the hospital noted that Biddle's petition, with one division devoted to Dr. Watts' negligence and a second devoted to claims against hospital personnel, asserted no claim of vicarious liability. Nor did Biddle's answers to interrogatories claim or infer an employment relationship between the doctor and hospital that would support a claim of respondeat superior. Aside from this alleged insufficiency in the pleadings, the hospital argued that any liability premised on Dr. Watts' negligence would have been discharged upon Biddle's settlement with him. The district court agreed on both counts, ruling as a matter of law that the issue of the hospital's vicarious liability for the acts of Dr. Watts had not been pled and, in any event, settlement with the doctor released the hospital from any vicarious liability based on the doctor's negligence. [518 NW2d Page 797]
Preliminarily we are faced with the question of whether Dr. Watts is an employee of the hospital or merely an independent contractor. The distinction is important, of course, because vicarious liability rests on proof of an agency relationship. Brosamle v. Mapco Gas Prods., Inc., 427 N.W.2d 473, 475 (Iowa 1988); Maine v. James Maine & Sons Co., 198 Iowa 1278, 1281, 201 N.W. 20, 21 (1924). In Iowa a physician is customarily regarded as an independent contractor, not an employee of the facility served. Dickinson v. Mailliard, 175 N.W.2d 588, 594 (Iowa 1970). The determination, however, turns on the facts of each case. Id. Here the district court declined to rule as a matter of law on the status of Dr. Watts, preserving the question for trial. The issue was effectively removed from the jury, however, by the court's adjudication of law points. Thus for purposes of considering the issues raised by Biddle on appeal, we will assume that the jury could have found Dr. Watts was an employee of the hospital.
Regarding the sufficiency of the pleadin
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