Horton v. Or. Health and Sci. Univ. — Apr. 2016 (Summary)

NEGLIGENCE, CAUSATION AND FORESEEABILITY

Horton v. Or. Health and Sci. Univ.
110811209; A155917 (Or. Ct. App. Apr. 27, 2016)

The court of appeals of Oregon reversed the decision of a trial court to dismiss a mother’s negligence claim for harm she suffered after undergoing emergency liver transplant surgery. The surgery was necessitated by complications arising from her infant son’s transplant surgery, which was negligently performed by the hospital. The hospital allegedly assigned an inexperienced surgeon for the eight-month-old’s surgery, failed to appropriately mark the proper blood vessels for the procedure, failed to coordinate with the transplant team, and failed to promptly stop the bleeding from the incorrect vessels. The hospital informed the mother her son would need an emergency liver transplant and that she was a tissue match. The mother chose to undergo the surgery, and suffered complications as a result.

The court of appeals held that the mother alleged adequate facts to show she would not have volunteered for the emergency liver transplant surgery but for the failed liver surgery of her infant son. In making this determination, the court of appeals relied on Oregon case law where causation was found when plaintiffs were injured responding to a defendant’s negligence rather than being more directly affected by the negligence. The court of appeals also found the mother’s injury foreseeable, noting that the hospital’s alleged negligence of assigning an inexperienced surgeon to the infant’s surgery, not properly identifying the appropriate blood vessels, failing to promptly stop the bleeding from damaged blood vessels, and failing to coordinate with the transplant team made the need for an emergency transplant liver surgery to correct those errors a foreseeable risk of their conduct. Furthermore, because an emergency liver transplant would need to be performed with a tissue match and the mother was prompted to volunteer by her child’s need for the emergency liver transplant, the court of appeals held the mother had sufficiently alleged facts to be considered a foreseeable plaintiff from the hospital and physicians’ conduct.