MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE VERDICT IN THIS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ACTION SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED, THE JURY REASONABLY FOUND THE DOCTOR’S NEGLIGENCE WAS NOT A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF PLAINTIFF’S INJURIES (FOURTH DEPT).
The Fourth Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined that plaintiff’s motion to set aside the verdict in this medical malpractice case should not have been granted. The jury found that the doctor’s postsurgical negligence (ordering an MRI of plaintiff’s hand rather than her wrist) was not a substantial factor in causing plaintiff’s injuries:
… [W]e conclude that the issues of negligence and proximate cause were not so inextricably interwoven as to make it logically impossible to find one without the other… . Where a verdict can be reconciled with a reasonable view of the evidence, the successful party is entitled to the presumption that the jury adopted that view … , and we conclude that defendants are entitled to that presumption here.
We also agree with defendants that the verdict was not against the weight of the evidence and that the court therefore erred in granting plaintiff’s posttrial motion. It is well settled that a jury verdict will be set aside as against the weight of the evidence only when the evidence at trial so preponderated in favor of the movant that the verdict could not have been reached on any fair interpretation of the evidence … . Applying that principle here, we conclude that there is a fair interpretation of the evidence pursuant to which the jury could have found that, notwithstanding the error in ordering the incorrect MRI, defendant did not cause any postsurgery injuries alleged by plaintiff … . We further conclude that the “trial was a prototypical battle of the experts, and the jury’s acceptance of defendants’ case was a rational and fair interpretation of the evidence”… . Capierseo v Tomaino, 2018 NY Slip Op 02917, Fourth Dept 4-27-18
NEGLIGENCE (MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE VERDICT IN THIS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ACTION SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED, THE JURY REASONABLY FOUND THE DOCTOR’S NEGLIGENCE WAS NOT A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF PLAINTIFF’S INJURIES (FOURTH DEPT))/MEDICAL MALPRACTICE (MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE VERDICT IN THIS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ACTION SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED, THE JURY REASONABLY FOUND THE DOCTOR’S NEGLIGENCE WAS NOT A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF PLAINTIFF’S INJURIES (FOURTH DEPT))/CIVIL PROCEDURE (SET ASIDE VERDICT, MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE VERDICT IN THIS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ACTION SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED, THE JURY REASONABLY FOUND THE DOCTOR’S NEGLIGENCE WAS NOT A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF PLAINTIFF’S INJURIES (FOURTH DEPT))/VERDICT, MOTION TO SET ASIDE (MEDICAL MALPRACTICE, MOTION TO SET ASIDE THE VERDICT IN THIS MEDICAL MALPRACTICE ACTION SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED, THE JURY REASONABLY FOUND THE DOCTOR’S NEGLIGENCE WAS NOT A PROXIMATE CAUSE OF PLAINTIFF’S INJURIES (FOURTH DEPT))