Perry v. Hospital of St. Raphael

550 A.2d 645, 17 Conn. App. 121, 1988 Conn. App. LEXIS 448
CourtConnecticut Appellate Court
DecidedNovember 22, 1988
Docket(6679)
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 550 A.2d 645 (Perry v. Hospital of St. Raphael) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Connecticut Appellate Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Perry v. Hospital of St. Raphael, 550 A.2d 645, 17 Conn. App. 121, 1988 Conn. App. LEXIS 448 (Colo. Ct. App. 1988).

Opinion

Dupont, C. J.

The plaintiff brought this action against the defendant hospital to recover damages for injuries sustained in a fall at the hospital that occurred subsequent to her eye surgery. After a trial by jury, a verdict was returned for the plaintiff in the amount of $170,000. The trial court denied the defendant’s motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict.

The defendant appeals, claiming that the trial court erred (1) in granting the plaintiff’s motion to preclude the defendant’s expert witness from offering testimony, (2) in admitting into evidence a statement contained in the records from a subsequent hospitalization of the plaintiff, and (3) in failing to seat an alternate as a sixth juror designated by lot pursuant to General Statutes § 51-243 (d).

This action was commenced in February, 1984. On March 12, 1987, the plaintiff filed interrogatories, requesting disclosure by the defendant of expert witness information. On May 14, 1987, the defendant answered that it had not yet selected its expert witnesses for trial. On September 28, 1987, the defendant disclosed James Shelton, an ophthalmologist, as an expert witness but failed to disclose the substance of the facts and opinions to which the witness was to testify or a summary of the grounds of his opinion as required by Practice Book § 220 (A) (l).1 On October 28,1987, less than two weeks before jury selection began, the defendant filed an additional response to the plaintiff’s request for disclosure, in which it provided the substance of the facts and opinions to which [123]*123Shelton was expected to testify and disclosed for the first time an additional expert.2

Subsequently, the plaintiff filed a motion for an order prohibiting the defendant from introducing at trial the testimony of its expert witnesses. The trial court, in granting the plaintiffs motion, found that the defendant had failed to provide full, open and timely disclosure despite ample opportunity to do so. The court noted the length of the litigation and the fact that the plaintiff had fully disclosed her experts more than one year before the defendant’s disclosure.

“The discovery rules are designed to facilitate trial proceedings and to make a ‘trial less a game of blind-man’s [buff] and more a fair contest with the basic issues and facts disclosed to the fullest practical extent.’ ” Perez v. Mount Sinai Hospital, 7 Conn. App. 514, 519, 509 A.2d 552 (1986), quoting United States v. Procter & Gamble, 356 U.S. 677, 682, 78 S. Ct. 983, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1077 (1958). When a party fails to comply with the requirements of Practice Book § 220, the trial court is authorized, pursuant to Practice Book § 231 (d)3 to prohibit the party from introducing designated matters into evidence. See Sturdivant v. Yale-New Haven Hospital, 2 Conn. App. 103, 106-107, 476 A.2d 1074 (1984). “ ‘ “The court’s decision on whether to impose the sanction of excluding the expert’s testimony concerning causation rests within the sound discretion of the court.” [Id.,] 107. Unless the trial court had abused a legal discretion, its action should not be disturbed; [124]*124in making this analysis, we must afford the decision of the trial court great weight and allow every reasonable presumption to be made in favor of its correctness. Timm v. Timm, 195 Conn. 202, 206, 487 A.2d 191 (1985); Dudas v. Ward Baking Co., 104 Conn. 516, 518, 133 A. 591 (1926). “In determining whether there has been an abuse of discretion, the ultimate issue is whether the court could reasonably conclude as it did.” Timm v. Timm, supra, 207; E. M. Loew’s Enterprises, Inc. v. Surabian, 146 Conn. 608, 611, 153 A.2d 463 (1959); Sturdivant v. Yale-New Haven Hospital, supra, 108. . . .’ Perez v. Mount Sinai Hospital, [supra].” Caccavale v. Hospital of St. Raphael, 14 Conn. App. 504, 507-508, 541 A.2d 893, cert. denied, 208 Conn. 812, 545 A.2d 1107 (1988); see Corosa Realty v. Covenant Ins. Co., 16 Conn. App. 684, 689, 548 A.2d 473 (1988). We conclude that the trial court did not abuse its broad discretion in finding that the defendant had failed to comply with discovery requirements and, thus, correctly precluded the defendant’s expert witness from testifying.

The defendant’s second claim of error is that the trial court erred in admitting into evidence statements contained in medical records made in connection with a surgical procedure performed subsequent to the surgery for which the plaintiff was hospitalized at the time of her fall. At the time of her fall in January, 1982, the plaintiff was hospitalized at the defendant hospital for cataract surgery on her right eye. The plaintiff underwent a similar surgical procedure at Yale-New Haven Hospital on her left eye in 1983. The discharge summary recorded in connection with the latter procedure contained an entry indicating that the plaintiff had undergone previous cataract surgery on her right eye which had been complicated by a postoperative fall.

The defendant objected to the admission of the unedited discharge summary and took exception to the trial court’s overruling of that objection. The defend[125]*125ant claims that the statement, as to the cause of the complication of the plaintiffs right eye surgery, was not made for the purpose of present diagnosis and treatment of her left eye, and thus was not within the scope of the hearsay exception for hospital records. Accordingly, the defendant contends that the statement contained on the discharge summary should have been deleted by the trial court. We disagree.

“Pursuant to General Statutes § 52-180, business records, although otherwise hearsay, are admissible if certain conditions are satisfied. One such condition is that they must have been made in the regular course of business. State v. Waterman, 7 Conn. App. 326, 341, 509 A.2d 518 [, cert. denied, 200 Conn. 807, 512 A.2d 231] (1986). Under General Statutes § 4-104, hospital records qualify for admission subject to the same conditions. ‘ “The real business of a hospital is the care and treatment of sick and injured persons. It is not to preserve information for use in litigation. Accordingly, even though it might be the custom of a hospital to include in its records information relating to questions of liability for injuries which had been sustained by its patients, such entries . . . would not be made admissible by the statute unless they also contained information having a bearing on diagnosis or treatment.” D'Amato v. Johnston, 140 Conn. 54, 61, 97 A.2d 893 [1953].’ Kelly v. Sheehan, 158 Conn.

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Bluebook (online)
550 A.2d 645, 17 Conn. App. 121, 1988 Conn. App. LEXIS 448, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/perry-v-hospital-of-st-raphael-connappct-1988.