Hospital Corporate Liability: The Walls Continue to Tumble

Dunn L.J. , Hospital Corporate Liability: The Trend Continues, Medicolegal News 8(5: 16 (October 1980).

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hosp., 294 N.W.2d 501 (Wisc. App. 1980).

Bost v. Riley, 262 S.E.2d 391 (N.C. App. 1980).

Southwick A. , The Physician's Right to Due Process in Public and Private Hospitals: Is There A Difference? Medicolegal News 9(1: 4(February 1981).

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hosp., 301 N.W.2d 156 (Wisc. 1981).

Id. at 163.

Id.

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hosp., supra note 2.

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hosp., supra note 5, at 163.

Id. at 164.

Id.

Darling v. Charleston Community Mem. Hosp., 211 N.E.2d 253(Ill. 1965), cert. denied 383 U.S. 946 (1966).

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hosp., supra note 5, at 165, 166.

235 N.E.2d 671 (Ill. App. 1968).

299 N.E.2d 326 (Ill. App. 1973).

The Illinois Supreme Court has yet to review Darling since its decision over fifteen years ago. Recently, a petition for leave to appeal filed by the defendant hospital in Johnson v. St. Bernard Hosp., 399 N.E.2d 198 (Ill. App. 1979). The petition for leave to appeal centered on the scope of Darling's application. The petition was denied last year by the Illinois Supreme Court.

Johnson v. Misericordia Community Hosp., supra note 5, at 174, 175.

Fridena v. Evans, 622 P.2d 463 (Ariz. 1980).

Id. at 465.

Id.

Capan v. Divine Providence Hosp., ___ A.2d ___ (Pa. 1980). See generally, Couch, Hospital Corporate Liability For Inadequate Quality Assurance in Pennsylvania, Journal of Legal Medicine 2(1: 14–46 (October 1980).

Capan v. Divine Providence Hosp., supra note 21.

Capan v. Divine Providence Hosp., 410 A.2d 1282, 1285–86 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1979).

In Johnson, supra note 5, note that the agency theory was used to establish the physician-hospital relationship, not the hospital-patient relationship. Secondly, this court also erroneously uses Darling, supra note 12, to support the notion that a hospital is responsible for the acts of physicians. To reiterate, however, the status of the physician in Darling was not stated.

Capan v. Divine Providence Hosp., supra note 21.

Id.

Id.

See, e.g., Greenberg v. Michael Reese Hosp., 415 N.E.2d 390 (Ill. 1980). “[W]hile various medical judgements are necessarily a daily part of hospital administration, they do not constitute the entirety of a hospital's function, as is the case with single medical practitioners.” Id. at 395, 396.

But query whether such an approach might not be politically wise; i.e., would not an unsuspecting patient (or his family) become wary upon seeing such an admonition and react by never returning to the hospital or recommending it to others. Perhaps a better way would be for the contract the hospital enters into with the physician or group staffing its emergency room or any other medical service to include a hold-harmless clause to indemnify the hospital for losses it may become responsible for due to the acts of those physicians.

After submission of this article for publication, the author became aware of Anesini v. Ashkenazy, Supreme Court of New York, Nassau County. There, the court, in a memorandum opinion dated December 16, 1980, concurred with the plaintiff's position that the hospital knew or should have known that the physician posed a risk to the plaintiff because the physician had often operated on patients unnecessarily in the past.