In any medical malpractice case, there are four general elements that must
be proven. These are: duty; breach; causation; and harm. While public
discussion of medical malpractice tends to focus a lot on the elements
of duty and breach, causation is a very important aspect of any medical
malpractice case.
Proving that a physician breached a recognized standard of care and that
the patient suffered harm is not enough in
medical malpractice litigation. It must also be proven that there is a sufficient connection between
the physician’s breach and the harm suffered by the patient. This
sufficient connection is otherwise known as “proximate cause.”
The issue of causation is a central one in a medical malpractice case currently
up on appeal before the Missouri Supreme Court. In that case, a physician
is being sued for malpractice on the allegation that the physician’s
negligence caused a terminal patient to die sooner than he otherwise would
have. In this case, the deceased patient had an aggressive form of brain
cancer that the patient’s doctor failed to detect.
The deceased man’s family argues that he would have lived a number
of months longer if the doctor had properly detected the cancer, and that
his failure to do so therefore amounted to an acceleration of death, even
though that death was inevitable. On the defendant side, the argument
is that the physician’s failure to detect cancer did not cause the
man’s death, since he would have died anyway. The defendant says
the proper test in this case is the “but for” test. In other
words, the physician argues that the proper question is whether the patient
would have died, but for the physician’s negligence.
In our next post, we’ll continue looking at this issue and the importance
of building a strong medical malpractice case around the issue of causation.
Source: Hannibal Courier-Post, “Mo. Supreme Court to hear Hannibal wrongful death case,” Eric Dundon, Oct. 20, 2015.
