Johnson v. Jamaica Hospital Medical CenterJohnson v. Jamaica Hospital Medical Center
Ordered that the judgment is reversed, on the law, the motions are denied, the complaint is reinstated, and a new trial is granted, with costs to abide the event.
On June 11, 1996, the plaintiff arrived at the emergency room of the defendant hospital with a gunshot wound which had severely fractured his tibia. The defеndant Robert Rosenthal was chief of orthopedic surgery at the hospital and the attending orthopеdic surgeon then on call in its emergency room. Rosenthal operated on the plaintiff‘s leg and, aftеr removing the bullet and cleaning the wound, he attached an “external fixator” to the leg for the purpose of stabilizing the tibia and allowing it to heal. In order to do so, he drilled several pins into the bone above and below the fracture. Four days later, the plaintiff was discharged from the hospital with instructions to stay off thе leg, to keep it dry, and not to touch the pins. Approximately two months later, the plaintiff developed a severe infection in the leg that required seven surgeries and hospitalization for 63 days.
The plaintiff cоmmenced this action against the defendants to recover damages for medical malpractiсe. He alleged that the defendants were negligent in failing to give him appropriate discharge instructions regarding the proper maintenance of the external fixator pins. At the close of the evidenсe, the Supreme Court granted the defendants’ motions pursuant to
A defendant‘s motion pursuant to
Contrary to the defendants’ contentions, the Supreme Court correctly determined that the plaintiff made out a prima facie case with respect to both Rosenthal‘s dеparture from the ac
Moreover, although Rosenthal was nоt an employee of the defendant hospital and therefore the hospital would not ordinarily be vicariously liable for his malpractice (see Padula v Bucalo, 266 AD2d 524 [1999]), “an exception to the general rule exists when a patient comes to the emergency room seeking treatment from the hospital and not from a particular physician of the patient‘s choosing” (Orgovan v Bloom, 7 AD3d 770, 771 [2004]; see also Padula v Bucalo, supra at 524-525). Here, the plaintiff offered evidence that he did not request treatment by any particular physician and that his case was assigned to Rosenthal on an emergеncy basis. Such evidence was sufficient to make out a prima facie case against the defendаnt hospital (see Hill v St. Clare‘s Hosp., 67 NY2d 72, 80-81 [1986]).
The Supreme Court erred, however, in concluding that the plaintiff failed to make out a prima facie case regarding causation. Rosenthal himself testified that when the plaintiff first presentеd with osteomyelitis, there was evidence of infection at one of the four pin sites, as well as in the original bullet wound and in the plaintiff‘s knee. On cross-examination, he testified that on the day the plaintiff was readmitted to the hospital for the infection, he presented with “[p]us coming out of the opening by the pin, coming out аlongside the pin,” and that “[t]his was one of the 4 pins, this would have been one of the pins above the fracture.” Moreover, the plaintiff‘s expert testified that although the risk of an infection at the pin site was ordinarily between six to eight percent, it increased approximately fourfold in the absence of daily clеansing. “In a medical malpractice action, where causation is often a difficult issue, a plaintiff need do no more than offer sufficient evidence from which a reasonable person might concludе that it was more probable than not that the injury was caused by the defendant” (Holton v Sprain Brook Manor Nursing Home, 253 AD2d 852 [1998]; see also Healy v Spector, 287 AD2d 541 [2001]; Minelli v Good Samaritan Hosp., 213 AD2d 705, 706 [1995]).