The Appellate Division, Fourth Department, in White v. Bajwa, MD., et al, (4th Dept. May 2018), heard arguments involving a medical malpractice suit seeking damages for an injury sustained to plaintiff’s left eye during hip replacement surgery. Plaintiff asserted he would rely on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor in support of his negligence cause of action. The Appellate Court modified the lower court’s decision dismissing the plaintiff’s negligence cause of action concerning surgical care to the extent the plaintiff relied on the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor. The Court found that while ordinarily a plaintiff asserting a medical malpractice claim must demonstrate that the doctor deviated from accepted medical practice, and that such deviation was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury, where the actual or specific cause of an accident is unknown, under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitor, a jury may in certain circumstances infer negligence merely from the happening of an event and the defendant’s relation to it. The Court found that that rule is particularly appropriate in a medical malpractice case such as this in which the plaintiff had been anesthetized.
