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Evidence of Risk of the Procedure
A common scenario in a medical malpractice case involves a patient who undergoes a medical or surgical procedure and is injured as a result of a complication that occurs during or following that procedure. Of course, the plaintiff is not entitled to recover simply because there was a complication. The jury will be instructed that doctors do not guarantee a good result, and they are not liable unless they failed to perform the procedure in accordance with the applicable standard of care. Similarly, a defendant is not relieved of liability simply because the complication was a known risk of the procedure. If the complication occurred because the doctor was negligent, regardless of whether it is possible for the injury to have occurred even if the doctor fully complied with the standard of care, the plaintiff is entitled to recover.
Absence of Negligence
In light of these basic principles, the defendant certainly should be permitted to offer evidence, given a proper foundation, that the plaintiff's injuries could have occurred in the absence of negligence. This is necessary to counter the possible impression of the jury that the mere occurrence of the complication is evidence of negligence. Conversely, the defendant should not be permitted to offer evidence that might lead a jury to improperly infer that the mere fact that a complication is a known risk of the procedure is evidence that the defendant was not negligent in causing that complication. Statistical data that a certain percentage of patients undergoing a specific medical or surgical procedure will suffer a particular complication does not provide relevant information on the issue of negligence. This data, unless it separates complications caused by negligence from those that are not, does not tend to prove the presence or absence of negligence in any individual case.
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