When a civil action is brought, the type of law often applicable to it is tort law. Tort law presupposes that certain harm has been done to the victim who subsequently sues the plaintiff and demands reimbursement of damages. The party at fault can be represented by several participants in the misfortune, and the liability is thus shared by those who inflicted the harm. To render rightful justice, it is therefore important to correctly determine the guilty parties and the level of their liability for the wrong caused to the victim.
In the case under consideration, it is obvious that several parties are to be held liable for the situation when the victim got his both wrists amputated by mistake. The initial harm was caused by manufacturing defects in the basketball rim produced by ACE Sports. Failure to perform proper quality control and notice the flaw that occurred during production, as well as failure to warn the customer of the latent danger of the product leads to the necessity of imposing liability on ACE Sports, and that liability in terms of tort law is strict, which does not depend on the degree of the carelessness of the guilty party but applies to cases when a particular action causes damage irrespective of the wrongdoer’s intention.
The second liable party appears to be the nurse at the City General hospital who failed to administer proper first aid to the victim, leaving him to stop the bleeding himself, thus violating the duty of care for her patient which she owed to him as a medical worker obliged to take immediate measures in emergency case. The fateful delay caused by finding out the insurance details, and the subsequent transfer of the victim to the local county facility should not have taken place, as by the EMTALA Statute (2008),
“A participating hospital may not delay the provision of an appropriate medical screening examination … or further medical examination and treatment … to inquire about the individual’s method of payment or insurance status” and “if an individual at a hospital has an emergency medical condition which has not been stabilized …, the hospital may not transfer the individual”.
Breaking both of those requirements of the law, the nurse has thus committed the tort of negligence towards the patient and should bear the blame as well.
Furthermore, the victim suffered from the negligent actions of the surgeon who arranged the amputation and erroneously cut the wrong wrist off. Unlike the Tyler case (Castaneda, 2000), where the shock-trauma doctor could not have prevented the harm due to incomplete information given to him by the medical staff, the surgeon is a guilty party in the reviewed case, as he was properly informed and directly involved into preparations and the surgery itself.
However obvious the blame of the parties discussed may be, circumstances are pointing at the fact that the notion of comparative negligence is also applicable to the case. That means that the victim has also contributed to the damage caused, and in the present case comparative negligence shows up as a lack of insurance for the victim, which caused the necessity of transferring from the City General Hospital. Thus, a part of the blame is to be shifted back to the victim reducing the size of the reimbursement of the damage by the plaintiffs.
As a result of all the abovementioned, tort law cases turn out to be quite complicated with various circumstances that have an impact on the court decision. Therefore, a careful examination of each party’s role in the case is necessary before determining their liability and passing judgment.
References
Castaneda, R. (2000). Amputee wins $5.4 million in suit against hospital. The Washington Post.
The EMTALA Statute. (2008). 42 US Code 1395dd.