Maroney v. Physicians & Surgeons Hospital

626 So. 2d 833, 1993 La. App. LEXIS 3295, 1993 WL 431430
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedOctober 27, 1993
DocketNo. 25,223-CA
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 626 So. 2d 833 (Maroney v. Physicians & Surgeons Hospital) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Maroney v. Physicians & Surgeons Hospital, 626 So. 2d 833, 1993 La. App. LEXIS 3295, 1993 WL 431430 (La. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

MARVIN, Chief Judge.

In this medical malpractice action, we affirm a judgment based on a jury verdict rejecting the demands of plaintiff, Edward Maroney, who developed blood clots about four weeks after arthroscopic knee surgery. A blood clot in his leg “threw off” smaller blood clots, some of which lodged in Maro-ney’s lungs, causing Maroney to suffer permanent respiratory problems and diminished blood circulation in his leg.

After Maroney was examined six days following the July 24, 1987, surgery by his orthopedic surgeon, who then left on vacation, Maroney made telephone calls to the surgeon’s office on August 5, 8 and 14, and spoke with two of the surgeon’s partner-orthopedists.

Maroney’s cause of action is based on what Maroney contends he told those two doctors and their responses. He testified to the jury that he told them his leg was swollen, painful, feverish and red. The two doctors conceded, as did all other medical witnesses, that they negligently treated and prescribed for Maro-ney if he told them what he testified to the jury.

One doctor had no independent recollection of Maroney’s calls of August 5 and 14 and little or no documentation of them. The other doctor remembered the August 8 conversation, although his recollection differed from Maroney’s. Each doctor testified that he would have insisted that Maroney come to the office for examination if Maroney had said that his leg was swollen, painful, feverish and red.

Thus the pivotal issue about what Maroney said to the doctors is a factual issue, especially in the light of the doctors’ concession that their conduct fell below the professional standard of care if the jury believed Maroney.

By a vote of 9-3, indicating that the factual issue was “close,” the jury resolved the issue against Maroney and in favor of defendants. On appeal, Maroney argues that the jury erred as a matter of law because more weight was given to defendants’ “negative” testimony [that Maroney could not have told them the symptoms he told the jury even though they did not remember specific details of the conversations] rather than to Maroney’s “positive” testimony of the symptoms he said he told the doctors.

Maroney overlooks, however, that the evidentiary rule requiring a trier of fact to give more weight to positive testimony than to negative testimony “only applies when a witnesses] credibility is not at issue.” Dunham v. Dunham, 467 So.2d 555, 559 (La.App. 1st Cir.1985), writ denied.

See also and compare West v. Bayou Vista Manor, Inc., 371 So.2d 1146 (La.1979) and Hand v. Reeves, 378 So.2d 1064 (La.App.2d Cir.1979), writ denied. In those cases, the principle that a worker’s compensation claimant’s positive testimony about an unwit-nessed accident, if supported by corroborating circumstances, is sufficient to prove the claim, was noted to apply only in the “absence of circumstances in the record casting suspicion on the reliability of [the plaintiffs] testimony.” West, at p. 1147; Hand, at p. 1066; our brackets.

The credibility and reliability of Maroney’s trial testimony about what he told the defendant doctors by telephone was placed at issue by evidence of a prior inconsistent statement in his deposition about the symptoms he reported in the first call and by inconsistencies between Maroney’s trial testimony about his physical condition August 5 — August 14 and what other doctors, who are not parties to the action, wrote as his “patient history” from what they said he told them on August 17, the day he was hospitalized for treatment [835]*835of the blood clots. One doctor-witness who saw Maroney on August 17 was the surgeon who practiced with the two defendant doctors. The other doctor-witness was not and is not professionally or otherwise related to the defendants.

While another trier of fact, judge or jury, may have reached a contrary conclusion, the jury’s unfavorable assessment of Maroney’s credibility, however “close” as indicated by the 9-3 verdict, and the jury’s implicit finding that Maroney did not tell the defendant doctors what he claimed to have told them, are reasonable on this record.

If the jury had believed Maroney, the verdict was conceded by defendants. The trial court’s instructions, which are not here complained of, gave the jury the prerogative of either believing or not believing Maroney’s trial testimony. We cannot find the jury was clearly wrong. Rosell v. ESCO, 549 So.2d 840 (La.1989); Stobart v. State through DOTD, 617 So.2d 880 (La.1993).

We shall discuss the evidence in the record.

DISCUSSION

The defendants originally included Drs. John J. Ferrell and J. Lee Etheredge, who spoke with Maroney by telephone, Dr. Baer Rambach, who performed the surgery, their medical corporation, Orthopaedic Associates, and their malpractice insurer, Medical Protective Insurance Company. The surgeon, Dr. Rambach, was dismissed from the action before trial.

Dr. Rambach performed the arthroscopic surgery to remove bone spurs from Maro-ney’s left knee on July 24,1987, at Physicians & Surgeons Hospital in Shreveport.

Unlike “open” knee surgery, in which a relatively large incision is made to expose the knee joint to the surgeon’s view, arthroscopic surgery is performed by inserting an arthroscope, or a flashing light beam apparatus about the size of an ink pen, and a fluid medium into the knee joint. The arthroscope contains a small camera, which allows the surgeon to view the knee joint through an eyepiece attached to the arthroscope. A magnified image of the invaded joint also appears on a television monitor in the operating room to facilitate the “closed” surgery.

To surgically display and invade the joint, only three small incisions are made in the knee in arthroscopic surgery. Arthroscopic surgery causes less physical trauma and post-surgery immobilization, and presents a much lower risk of developing blood clots, than does open knee surgery.

Maroney’s surgery and his first week of recovery were uneventful. Maroney saw Dr. Rambach on July 30, six days after the surgery, for a follow-up examination. Dr. Ram-bach removed the stitches from Maroney’s knee, replaced his full-length leg cast or splint with a shorter removable splint, and told him to keep weight off of his leg until his next scheduled visit on August 20, about three weeks later. Dr. Rambach noted that Maroney’s progress was “satisfactory” on July 30.

Maroney testified about his condition in the first week after the surgery:

Everything was going pretty good that first week like that. [Dr. Rambach] had me in a long splint that come from my groin on down past my mid calf, and it was a long Velcro type fastener. It’s a covering, and you slip this Velcro thing on there, and that’s the way I had it for the first week. Now, the only thing, it was uncomfortable, and I had some pain with it; that’s true, but it wasn’t anything unusual that I didn’t expect at that time. ... on the 30th of July ... [Dr. Rambach] examined my leg. Everything looked good. I had no problems. There was slight swelling, but — he removed the stitches. He put the little round Bandaids on it, and he ... put a little shorter cast on it ...
[Dr. Rambach] told me to set an appointment for [August] 20th, and he didn’t want any weight-bearing on the leg_ So I was strictly on crutches all the way at that time ...

Maroney testified that on August 1, two days after his July 30 visit to Dr.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Havard v. Children's Clinic of Southwest Louisiana, Inc.
722 So. 2d 1178 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1998)
Smith v. State Dept. of Health & Hosp.
650 So. 2d 450 (Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1995)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
626 So. 2d 833, 1993 La. App. LEXIS 3295, 1993 WL 431430, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/maroney-v-physicians-surgeons-hospital-lactapp-1993.