Kerby v. Moab Valley Healthcare, Inc., 362 P.3d 944

Patient underwent esophagoscopy/bronchoscopy at Allen Memorial Hospital and received multiple sedative/analgesic medications; nurses observed her drowsy and incoherent at discharge.
Patient was discharged to her ex-husband, found dead at home hours later; autopsy listed combined effects of asthma, chronic bronchitis, drug toxicity (morphine and promethazine), and obesity as cause of death.
Plaintiffs (daughter and mother) sued Moab Valley Healthcare (Allen Memorial) for malpractice, arguing nurses breached the standard of care by discharging a pharmaceutically inebriated patient who should have been admitted for overnight observation.
Plaintiffs moved for partial summary judgment on causation, relying largely on deposition testimony of the defendant’s toxicology/causation expert; trial court denied both the original and renewed motions due to disputed material facts and limited expert qualifications.
At trial the jury found breach of the standard of care but concluded the breach did not proximately cause the patient’s death; jury awarded nothing. Plaintiffs also challenged admission of testimony that the decedent’s son was incarcerated; the trial court allowed limited testimony and the appellate court found no prejudicial error.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether causation could be decided as a matter of law (partial summary judgment)	Expert testimony established that patient would, more likely than not, have survived if kept in hospital overnight	Expert’s causation testimony was qualified/outside his expertise and factual disputes (e.g., source/amount of promethazine) precluded summary judgment	Denied — factual disputes and qualified expert testimony made causation a jury question
Whether testimony about decedent’s incarcerated son was unfairly prejudicial under Rule 403	Evidence of son’s incarceration was irrelevant and prejudicial and should have been excluded	Decedent’s relationships with all children are probative of damages and family relationships; son’s status bears on those relationships	Admissible — trial court did not abuse discretion; any error not shown to be prejudicial

Bingham v. Roosevelt City Corp., 235 P.3d 730 (2010) (standard of review for summary judgment and viewing evidence for nonmovant)
Jensen v. Mountain States Tel. & Tel. Co., 611 P.2d 363 (1979) (summary judgment on proximate cause appropriate only when reasonable minds cannot differ)
Draper City v. Estate of Bernardo, 888 P.2d 1097 (1995) (fact-sensitive issues generally unsuitable for summary judgment)
Kilpatrick v. Wiley, Rein & Fielding, 909 P.2d 1283 (1996) (causation rarely disposed of on summary judgment)
Sohm v. Dixie Eye Ctr., 166 P.3d 614 (2007) (medical malpractice requires expert proof of standard of care and proximate cause)
Harline v. Barker, 854 P.2d 595 (1993) (proximate cause defined as cause without which the result would not have occurred)
Glacier Land Co. v. Claudia Klawe & Assocs., 154 P.3d 852 (2006) (erroneous admission of evidence requires showing of substantial influence on verdict to warrant reversal)