holding plaintiff established prima facie case of corporate negligence against hospital based on its failure to oversee all persons practicing medicine within its walls; expert testified that hospital nurses breached applicable standard of care in connection with delivery of infant, in that they must have been aware of problem with delivery but failed to act on that knowledge
How later courts described this case
- holding plaintiff established prima facie case of corporate negligence against hospital based on its failure to oversee all persons practicing medicine within its walls; expert testified that hospital nurses breached applicable standard of care in connection with delivery of infant, in that they must have been aware of problem with delivery but failed to act on that knowledge
- holding that, "unless a hospital's negligence is obvious, a plaintiff must produce expert testimony to establish that the hospital deviated from an accepted standard of care and that the deviation was a substantial factor in causing the harm to the plaintiff"
- holding that appellate courts cannot consider any matter which is not part of the record
- noting that a corporate negligence claim requires an expert to identify a defendant medical institution’s standard of care, and the ways in which the defendant’s departure from those standards led to the plaintiff’s injuries
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
FLAHERTY, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I would affirm the superior court’s decision upholding the trial court’s entry of summary judgment in favor of Nason Hospital. Further, I express my continuing opposition to this court’s creation of such a novel concept as “corporate liability,” which is in every sense of the term an anomaly to established concepts of liability under respondeat superior. I make reference to my dissenting opinion in Thompson v. Nason Hospital, 527 Pa. 330 , 591 A.2d 703 (1991).