Case Brief:
Venkateswarlu Thota, and North Texas Cardiology Center, v. Margaret YOUNG
Parties:
The parties in the case are Margaret Young who is the appellant in the case on behalf of her deceased husband, William Ronnie, appealing an adverse verdict that had been made regarding a claim of medical malpractice against Venkateswarlu Thota, M.D. and his employer, North Texas Cardiology Center (NTCC) concerning the kind of treatment she received with her husband during Ronnie’s cardiac catheterization. The plaintiff in the case is Ronnie’s Estate and Margaret Young, while the defendants are Dr. Thota and North Texas Cardiology Center (MoreLaw, 2008). Ronnie had died on March 10th, 2005, at the age of fifty-seven three months after Dr. Thota had performed a cardiac catheterization that caused several other complications.
Facts:
Ronnie suffered from abdominal pains. He fell from a chair in the evening of the same day that he had undergone cardiac catheterization. After being rushed back to the hospital, it was discovered that Ronnie had a large hematoma that had been caused by bleeding from the site of a cardiac catheterization. Ronnie underwent emergency surgery in the attempt to repair an arterial tear that had been caused by the cardiac catheterization. Ronnie was placed on a ventilator due to complications that had been caused by the cardiac catheterization. Ronnie had several strokes, lost one eye vision, and acute renal failure. He died three years later of leukemia.
Procedure
The appeal was based on instructions that the judge had provided to the jury upon the initial trial. The main argument was to determine whether the court had granted the jury with instructions that are not proper, known as “new and independent cause,” and whether the submission of the patient’s conduct as “contributory negligence” was not a proper submission by the court (FindLaw, 2020).
Issue:
The general concept holds that the conduct of a patient that may befall after the doctor’s actions was made in a negligence way, and then the conduct will be considered as “contributory negligence.” However, the doctors’ conduct of contributory negligence can be construed as the “failure to mitigate damages.” The determination of proper jury instructions was conducted to determine if the instructions played a significant part in the outcome of the case by affecting the jury’s ability to answer the issues presented to them. The general law only supports the reverse of judgment based on a charge error if the error was harmful that it had a probability of causing the rendition of the improper judgment or had a likelihood of preventing the petitioner from presenting the case properly to the appellate courts.
Holding:
The court of appeal held that the instructions presented to the jury by the trial judge were both erroneous and presumptively harmful, and the new trail was to be conducted (Casetext Inc., 2020). The Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals decision by returning that the harm could not be presumed.
Reasoning:
The Supreme Court evidence reasoned that the error of instructions did not attain the degree that can be considered to cause harm on delivery of proper judgment. Moreover, it did not have any probability of preventing the petitioner from presenting the case accurately to the appellate courts. Therefore, the court ruled the erroneous instructions to the jury were harmless. The appellate cannot get a new trial using correct instructions since the change of instruction could not have any impact on the facts of the case. The other reason for considering the choice is that it is not certain that the bleeding from the site of a cardiac catheterization was a result of negligence and not impact from the patient falling from the chair.
References
Casetext Inc. (2020). Young v. Thota. Retrieved from https://casetext.com/case/young-v-thota/?PHONE_NUMBER_GROUP=P&NEW_CASE_PAGE=N
FindLaw. (2020). THOTA v. YOUNG. Retrieved from https://caselaw.findlaw.com/tx-supreme-court/1600779.html
MoreLaw. (2008). Margaret Young v. Venkateswarlu Thota, M.D. and North Texas Cardiology Center. Retrieved from https://www.morelaw.com/verdicts/case.asp?n=2-05-350-CV&s=TX&d=38095
