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Snider v. Basilio10/24/2005
t Dr. Basilio violated the standard of care, the trial court erred in granting her a directed verdict.
2. The Sniders contend that the trial court erred in preventing them from offering testimony that DeVera has failed the Georgia State Board of Nursing licensing examination. This court has held, however, that a trial court did not err in refusing to allow evidence that a doctor had failed a board examination because such evidence has little relevance to the issue in a medical malpractice case of whether the doctor met the requisite standard of care.
A physician's inability to pass certification and licensure examinations does not make probable his negligent performance of a specific procedure. Such evidence has little if any relevance to the issue of whether the physician complied with the standard of care required in his treatment in a given case.
While the instant case involves a nurse's inability to pass a licensing examination rather than a doctor's inability, we agree with the trial court that the same rationale applies here. That is, the ultimate issue as to DeVera is whether she complied with the standard of care required in this case, and her inability to pass a licensing examination has little if any relevance to that issue. Moreover, we note that while the trial court prohibited evidence that DeVera had not passed the examination, it nevertheless allowed evidence that she was not in fact a licensed nurse. Since DeVera's inability to pass the licensing examination has no real relevance to the standard of care issue, we find no abuse of discretion in the trial court's refusal to allow evidence of such inability.
3. The Sniders claim that the trial court improperly restricted their right to cross-examine the final defense expert, Dr. Michael Radetsky. While questioning Dr. Radetsky about several depositions he had given in prior cases, the Sniders' attorney asked him: "And of those five or six depositions one of them was in a case which had been filed against you as a defendant, correct?" Before the expert could answer, the defendants objected and moved for a mistrial, which the trial court granted. The Sniders contend that the trial court erred in prohibiting evidence that the expert had been a defendant in a prior case because it is relevant to show his bias.
While it appears that the granting of a mistrial during the testimony of the final defense expert was an unnecessarily extreme reaction by the trial judge since any harm by the question could have been cured with an instruction to the jury, we nevertheless find no abuse of discretion in the judge's finding that the question was improper. This court has previously held that a trial court does not abuse its discretion in preventing evidence that an expert witness had been named as a defendant in an unrelated malpractice action because such evidence does not necessarily show bias and is not unequivocally relevant to the case in which the expert is testifying.
Judgment reversed. Ruffin, C. J., and Barnes, J., concur.
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