Verdicts

Facing no opposition from the plaintiffs, a New York trial court dismissed a hospital from a lawsuit that claimed damages for loss of consortium as any negligence attributable to the hospital occurred six months prior to the plaintiff's marriage to the alleged medical malpractice victim. Torres v. Hyun Taik Cho, — N.Y.S.2d —-, 2010 WL 1949113, N.Y.Sup., 4/26/10.

Defendants Dr. Hyun Taik Cho, St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Center and Beth Israel Medical Center sought dismissal of plaintiff wife's complaint for loss of consortium. They argued the alleged injury suffered by plaintiff Jose Torres occurred prior to the plaintiffs' marriage. Torres had undergone surgery in 1997 and plaintiffs asserted that during the surgery Dr. Cho departed from accepted standards of medical care by leaving a piece of plastic tubing in Torres' abdominal cavity. Plaintiffs were married six months after this first surgery. After the marriage, Torres underwent a second surgery at St. Vincent's, also performed by Dr. Cho. During a third surgery performed by a non-party physician, the left-behind tubing was discovered. Torres claimed that Dr. Cho committed medical malpractice by leaving the foreign body in his abdominal cavity and by failing to detect it during the following 10 years, including during the second surgery performed by Dr. Cho.