MA Medical Negligence and Recent SJC Opinion on Third Party Liability Limits
In Coombes v. Florio, 450 Mass. 182 (2007), a physician owed a duty of reasonable care to those foreseeability put at risk by a doctor’s failure to warn the patient of the side effects of the patient's treatment. In Coombes a young boy was struck and killed by a car driven by one taking medications, but who had neither been warned of the medications' side effects, nor been told not to drive while taking these medications. See Massachusetts Bar Association review of Coombes. Thus, liability under Coombes could be extended and include those not having any doctor-patient relationship. A recent case dealing with negligence, duty, and foreseeability sought to expand this holding even further, but it was unsuccessful before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC).
In Leavitt vs. Brockton Hospital, Inc., Sheila Smith and Karen Sullivan (slip opinion), a pedestrian involved in a car accident had undergone a colonoscopy earlier in the day and was walking home from Brockton Hospital when struck by another vehicle. While heading to the accident's location, a Whitman police cruiser was hit by another vehicle resulting in an officer being seriously and permanently injured. The police officer sued the hospital for negligence claiming they had breached their duty of care, among other things, when they released the previously sedated patient without an escort. The Supreme Judicial Court agreed the case had been properly dismissed by a lower court and upheld that court's decision.
In a footnote, the court noted the different standards for reviewing a motion to dismiss because the standard had changed from the time of the judge's ruling to the time of the SJC's review. Regardless, the court opined this case would have failed under either standard.
After the judge had ruled on the hospital's motion to dismiss, we adopted as applicable to our civil rules the United States Supreme Court's revision of the standard for reviewing the adequacy of a complaint challenged by a motion to dismiss pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12 (b) (6). See Iannacchino v. Ford Motor Co., 451 Mass. 623, 635-636 (2008), quoting Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 127 S. Ct. 1955, 1966 (2007) ("What is required at the pleading stage are factual 'allegations plausibly suggesting [not merely consistent with]' an entitlement to relief . . ."). The hospital does not ask that we apply the new, "stricter" standard. See Flomenbaum v. Commonwealth, 451 Mass. 740, 751 n.12 (2008). The complaint would not survive the hospital's motion to dismiss under either standard.Technorati Tags: negligence, duty, police, hospital, Coombes
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Personal injury lawyers, in Massachusetts

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