Pratt v. Petelin , 733 F.3d 1006 ( 2013 )

FILED
United States Court of Appeals
Tenth Circuit
August 19, 2013
Elisabeth A. Shumaker
Clerk of Court
PUBLISH
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
TENTH CIRCUIT
JENNIFER PRATT,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
v. No. 11-3282
JOSEPH PETELIN, M.D.,
Defendant-Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Kansas
(D.C. No. 2:09-CV-02252-GLR)
Mark A. Lynch (Kyle R. Ramsey with him on the briefs) of Holbrook & Osborn,
P.A., Overland Park, Kansas, for Defendant-Appellant.
John W. Witten (Mary C. O’Connell with him on the brief) of Douthit Frets
Rouse Gentile & Rhodes, L.L.C., Kansas City, Missouri, for Plaintiff-Appellee.
Before LUCERO, SEYMOUR, and MURPHY, Circuit Judges.
SEYMOUR, Circuit Judge.
Mrs. Jennifer Pratt sued Joseph Petelin, M.D. for medical negligence. The
district court submitted four factual theories of negligence to the jury, which
returned a general verdict against Dr. Petelin in the amount of $153,000. Dr.
Petelin appeals, claiming three of the four factual contentions submitted to the
jury were unsupported by sufficient evidence. We hold that Dr. Petelin waived
this argument by not objecting to the general verdict form and requesting a
special verdict.
I.
Mrs. Pratt was diagnosed with papillary carcinoma, a type of thyroid
cancer. Pre-operative radiology studies—a CT scan and an ultrasound-guided
fine needle biopsy—were conducted in early May 2007 and showed the existence
of two masses in her neck. The ultrasound was interpreted by a radiologist to
show a mass emanating off the bottom left lobe of her thyroid gland that
measured 2 x 2 x 2 cm, as well as a smaller mass in the thyroid gland itself. The
biopsy of the larger mass confirmed that Mrs. Pratt had cancer.
Dr. Petelin performed what he reported as a “total thyroidectomy” on Mrs.
Pratt on May 17, 2007, during which, according to the pathology report, he
claimed to have removed her entire thyroid gland and a single 0.9 cm mass that
tested positive for cancer. Following the surgery, Mrs. Pratt expressed concern to
her mother and her friend that she could still feel a lump in her neck. She met
-2-
with Dr. Petelin on May 29, told him about the mass she continued to feel in her
neck, and complained of fatigue. Dr. Petelin assured her that these were normal
post-operative symptoms. Mrs. Pratt continued to feel the mass in her neck and
spoke to Dr. Petelin on the telephone in June, complaining of the mass, fatigue,
hoarseness, and difficulty breathing and swallowing. Dr. Petelin assured her she
was fine and did not need any scans or image studies. Mrs. Pratt next spoke to
Dr. Petelin in person on June 21 and again related her various symptoms. She
asked Dr. Petelin to order a scan of the area. He refused, telling her it was
impossible for a mass to still be in her neck because he had just operated on that
area. Feeling still worse the next day, Mrs. Pratt arranged a scan without the
involvement of Dr. Petelin, which revealed that she still had a mass in her neck
and that her lymph nodes were possibly malignant as well.
Mrs. Pratt made an appointment to see a different surgeon, Terence Tsue,
M.D., who performed a “completion thyroidectomy,” a neck dissection and a
paratracheal lymph node dissection on July 17, 2007. Dr. Tsue’s operative report
described removing a “thyroid mass” as well as “suspicious lymph nodes.” Aple.
App. at 23. Dr. Tsue’s surgical pathology report indicated the thyroid specimen
that was removed measured 4 x 2 x 1.1 cm.
Mrs. Pratt filed this diversity action against Dr. Petelin, which was tried to
a jury. After the close of evidence, the district court held a jury instruction
conference. Instruction No. 9, the subject of this appeal, provided:
-3-
The plaintiff, Jennifer Pratt, claims that she sustained
injuries and damages due to the fault of the defendant, Joseph H.
Petelin, M.D. in the following respects: during the May 17, 2007
surgery by [1] failing to remove all thyroid tissue, including a
cancerous mass, [2] failing to remove lymph nodes, [3] failing
to timely review the May 18, 2007 pathology report and [4]
failing to consider plaintiff’s post-surgical symptoms.
The plaintiff has the burden to prove that her claims are
more probably true than not true. It is not necessary that each of
you agree upon a specific claim of fault.
The defendant denies that he was at fault and generally
denies plaintiff’s claims.
Aplt. App. at 68.
Dr. Petelin objected to this instruction on the basis that the final three fault
contentions—failing to remove lymph nodes, failing to timely review the
pathology report and failing to consider plaintiff’s post-surgical symptoms—were
not supported by sufficient evidence. But he did not object to the first contention,
that he failed to remove all thyroid tissue. Significantly, Dr. Petelin neither
objected to the use of a general verdict form nor requested a special verdict.
The jury returned a unanimous verdict finding Dr. Petelin’s negligence had
injured Mrs. Pratt. It awarded a total of $153,000: $15,000 in medical expenses,
$13,000 for economic loss, and $125,000 for noneconomic loss. After judgment
was entered, Dr. Petelin moved for judgment as a matter of law and alternatively
for a new trial, raising the same objections to Instruction No. 9. The district court
overruled both motions.
-4-
On appeal, Dr. Petelin continues to contend the district court erred by
submitting Instruction No. 9 to the jury on the basis that three of the four factual
contentions of negligence contained in the instruction were not supported by
sufficient evidence. He specifically asserts that these contentions were not
supported by expert witness testimony as required by Kansas medical malpractice
law, and that they do not fall under the “common knowledge” exception to that
rule. 1 He still does not claim any defect in the first factual contention contained
in the instruction—that he negligently failed to remove all thyroid tissue,
including a cancerous mass. Accordingly, it is uncontested that there is sufficient
evidence to support at least one of Mrs. Pratt’s factual theories of liability.
II.
We review de novo whether a district court’s jury instructions correctly
stated the governing law. Martinez v. Caterpillar, Inc., 572 F.3d 1129, 1132
(10th Cir. 2009). “We review the district court’s decision about whether to give a
particular instruction for abuse of discretion.” Id. Under federal law, a party is
entitled to an instruction on his theory of the case if it is supported by competent
evidence. Higgins v. Martin Marietta Corp., 752 F.2d 492, 496 (10th Cir. 1985).
1
As a diversity case, the content of jury instructions is a matter of state
substantive law but the determination of whether an instruction was erroneously
given is governed by federal procedural law. Martinez v. Caterpillar, Inc., 572
F.3d 1129, 1131-32 (10th Cir. 2009).
-5-
In making this determination, we review the evidence in the light most favorable
to the verdict. Martinez, 572 F.3d at 1133.
In arguing that he is entitled to a new trial, Dr. Petelin relies on our cases
holding that a general verdict cannot stand when “the district court erroneously
instructed the jury on an improper theory and we are unable to determine with
‘absolute certainty’ whether the jury relied on the erroneous instruction . . . .”
Allen v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 241 F.3d 1293, 1298 (10th Cir. 2001) (quoting
Farrell v. Klein Tools, Inc., 866 F.2d 1294, 1301 (10th Cir. 1989)); see also
Anixter v. Home-Stake Production Co., 77 F.3d 1215, 1229 (10th Cir. 1996)
(same). But these cases address the situation where the jury may have based its
verdict on an incorrect or entirely unsupported legal theory. They are thus
distinguishable from the case at hand, where Dr. Petelin claims that some, but not
all, of the factual bases presented to the jury for one legal theory—negligence—
were unsupported by sufficient evidence.
For example, Anixter was a securities fraud action in which the jury
returned a general verdict against the defendant after being instructed on both
principal liability and aiding and abetting liability. 77 F.3d at 1221. We reversed
and remanded for a new trial because the aiding and abetting theory of liability
was subsequently found invalid by the Supreme Court under that section of the
Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Id. at 1218-19. The district court’s erroneous
instruction in Anixter necessitated a new trial because it involved a separate and
-6-
legally erroneous “theory of liability” rather than a factual contention
unsupported by sufficient evidence. Id. at 1229. In that context, we held that
even a “remote” chance that the jury relied on the improper legal theory required
reversal. Id. at 1231.
Similarly, in Allen, a shopper sued Wal-Mart after being injured by falling
boxes of merchandise. 241 F.3d at 1295. The jury was instructed on two separate
theories of liability, negligence and res ipsa loquitur, and returned a general
verdict against Wal-Mart. Id. at 1298. On appeal, we concluded that the
applicable substantive law prohibited the application of the res ipsa loquitur
doctrine on the facts of the case. Once again, we reversed and remanded for a
new trial because the district court had instructed the jury on an improper legal
theory of liability, id. at 1299, and we could not say with “absolute certainty” that
the jury had not relied on it. Id. at 1298.
In Farrell, the plaintiff sued a safety belt and lanyard manufacturer in a
products liability case, and the jury returned a general verdict in favor of the
manufacturer. 866 F.2d at 1296. The plaintiff appealed, contending the district
court erred in instructing the jury on the defenses of abnormal use and assumption
of the risk. Id. After holding that the instruction on abnormal use was given in
error because it was not supported by sufficient evidence, we stated: “The general
verdict frustrates a determination of the basis of the jury’s decision, and reversal
and remand for a new trial are required.” Id. at 1300 (internal quotation marks
-7-
omitted). Dr. Petelin contends that Farrell supports reversal in this case because
appellants in Farrell obtained a reversal based on insufficient evidence to support
an instruction on a theory of the defense. Unlike here, however, the challenged
instruction in Farrell consisted of a legal theory wholly unsupported by evidence.
Once one legal theory of the defense was eliminated as a potential basis of the
jury’s decision, reversal was required because we were unable to tell from the
general verdict whether the jury had relied on the unsupported defense of
abnormal use in finding for the defendant, rather than on the defense of
assumption of the risk. Id. at 1301.
Here, Mrs. Pratt proceeded under a single theory of liability—medical
negligence—and advanced four factual contentions as possible bases for finding
Dr. Petelin liable under this legal theory. 2 In contrast to the cases discussed
2
In response to Dr. Petelin’s Renewed Motion for Judgment as a Matter of
Law or, Alternatively, Motion for New Trial, the district court construed the first,
uncontested claim of negligence contained in Instruction No. 9—failure to remove
all thyroid tissue—as the “principal ground of alleged negligence . . . the thrust of
the entire case.” Aplt. App. at 145. In the opinion of the district court, the other
three factual theories in the instruction were “secondary and incidental” to this
primary contention and “the jury could hardly have found Defendant
professionally negligent upon any of the latter three claims, without having found
him first negligent for failing to find and remove all the cancerous tissue in or
adjacent to the thyroid gland itself.” Id. Because we hold that Dr. Petelin waived
his opportunity to challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting these other
three factual contentions by not seeking a special verdict, we need not decide
whether Instruction No. 9 in fact constituted one or multiple bases of negligence
liability. We assume, arguendo, that each of these factual contentions
represented a separate and distinct avenue of possible negligence for the jury to
find Dr. Petelin liable.
-8-
above, Dr. Petelin does not contend the district court erred in instructing the jury
on the legal theory of negligence in this case, but only that three of the four
factual bases of negligence were unsupported by sufficient evidence.
Accordingly, the cases applying our general verdict rule to instructions rendered
erroneous by legal error do not control the outcome of this appeal.
Dr. Petelin attempts to avoid this conclusion by arguing that the three
factual contentions he challenges in Instruction No. 9 are legally insufficient
under Kansas law and thus erroneous as a matter of law, like the cases cited
above. This argument was addressed and rejected by the Supreme Court in
Griffin v. United States, 502 U.S. 46, 58-59 (1991).
In Griffin, a criminal case, the defendant was convicted by a general jury
verdict of conspiring to defraud an agency of the federal government. Id. at 47.
The government had alleged the illegal conspiracy on two factual bases: an
attempt to defraud the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and an attempt to defraud
the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Id. Although no evidence was
introduced to link the defendant to any effort to defraud the DEA, the district
court instructed the jury in a manner that would permit it to find the defendant
guilty under either of the government’s two factual contentions. Id. at 48. The
Supreme Court affirmed Griffin’s conviction, distinguishing between jury
instructions that are erroneous due to “legal error,” which require a new trial, and
those that suffer from “insufficiency of proof” as to some but not all of the factual
-9-
bases of the indictment, which do not. Id. at 58. As examples, the court
explained that legal error in this context would consist of convicting a defendant
by a general verdict under a multi-prong statute, one prong of which is later held
unconstitutional, id. at 52-53 (citing Stromberg v. California, 283 U.S. 359(1931)), or convicting a defendant by general verdict for a conspiracy to violate
two statutes, one of which is later determined to have been time barred, id. at
51-52 (citing Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298 (1957)).
The defendant in Griffin argued that “the distinction between legal error []
and insufficiency of proof [] is illusory, since judgments that are not supported by
the requisite minimum of proof are invalid as a matter of law . . . .” Id. at 58
(emphasis in original). In response, the Court explained:
In one sense ‘legal error’ includes inadequacy of evidence—namely,
when the phrase is used as a term of art to designate those mistakes
that it is the business of judges (in jury cases) and of appellate courts
to identify and correct. . . . But in another sense—a more natural and
less artful sense—the term ‘legal error’ means a mistake about the
law, as opposed to a mistake concerning the weight or the factual
import of the evidence. . . . [W]e are using ‘legal error’ in that latter
sense.
Id. at 59.
The Court also discussed in Griffin why we differentiate between jury
instructions that contain a legal error and those that contain factual contentions
unsupported by sufficient evidence. The Court explained that “[j]urors are not
generally equipped to determine whether a particular theory of conviction
-10-
submitted to them is contrary to law—whether, for example, the action in
question is protected by the Constitution, is time barred, or fails to come within
the statutory definition of the crime.” Id. On the other hand, “[q]uite the
opposite is true . . . when they have been left the option of relying upon a
factually inadequate theory, since jurors are well equipped to analyze the
evidence.” Id. (emphasis in original) (citing Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145,
157 (1968)). We see no reason this rule should not also apply in civil cases. See
Cordance Corp. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 658 F.3d 1330, 1338 (Fed. Cir. 2011)
(applying Griffin in civil case); Walther v. Lone Star Gas Co., 952 F.2d 119, 126
(5th Cir. 1992) (same).
Because Dr. Petelin does not allege a “legal error” in the sense the Court
explained in Griffin, his failure to request a special verdict as to each factual
theory contained in Instruction No. 9 prevents him from challenging the
sufficiency of the evidence supporting these factual theories on appeal. We
applied this waiver rule most clearly in Dixson v. Newsweek, 562 F.2d 626 (10th
Cir. 1977). There, a libel action was brought against Newsweek for an article that
the plaintiff alleged contained several distinct libelous statements. Id. at 630-31.
The jury entered a general verdict against Newsweek and on appeal the magazine
argued, “that if any one of the statements on which plaintiff relies to establish
defamation is not actionable for any reason, the verdict must be set aside because
there is no way to know on what statement the jury predicated liability.” Id. at
-11-
631. We held this argument had been waived, explaining that “[b]y failing to
request special verdicts, Newsweek waived its right to complain on appeal.” Id.;
see also Union Pac. R.R. Co. v. Lumbert, 401 F.2d 699, 701 (10th Cir. 1968) (“In
the absence of a pertinent objection to the charge or a request for a specific
interrogatory a general verdict is upheld where there is substantial evidence
supporting any ground of recovery in favor of an appellee.”); Anixter v. Home-
Stake Prod. Co., 77 F.3d 1215, 1231 (10th Cir. 1996) (discussing rule from
Lumbert and declining to apply it where the instruction contained a legal error
rather than a factual contention not supported by sufficient evidence).
This waiver rule has also been applied by the Ninth Circuit in McCord v.
Maguire, 873 F.2d 1271, 1274 (9th Cir. 1989), amended, 885 F.2d 650 (9th
Cir.1989) (“[Defendant] contends that the jury may have based its verdict solely
on the four allegedly unsubstantiated factual theories. . . . However, [defendant’s]
failure to request a special verdict as to each factual theory in the case prevents
him from pressing this argument on appeal.”), the Seventh Circuit in Eastern
Trading Co. v. Refco, Inc., 229 F.3d 617, 622 (7th Cir. 2000) (where jury heard
instruction on a theory for which there was no evidentiary support and opposing
party did not request special interrogatory, party “has only itself to blame for its
inability to demonstrate that the jury was confused by the instruction”), and the
Eighth Circuit in Gen. Indus. Corp. v. Hartz Mountain Corp., 810 F.2d 795, 801
(8th Cir. 1987) (applying waiver rule to failure to object to general verdict on
-12-
damages). But see Gillespie v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 386 F.3d 21, 30-31 (1st
Cir. 2004) (weighing arguments for and against the waiver rule and declining to
adopt it). The waiver rule is also followed in numerous state courts. See, e.g.,
Nimetz v. Cappadona, 596 A.2d 603, 606-08 (D.C. 1991) (citing state court
cases); Halper v. Jewish Family & Children’s Serv. of Greater Philadelphia, 600
Pa. 145, 157 (2009).
The rationale for this rule was cogently stated by the court in McCord:
Litigants like [the defendant] who wish to challenge the
sufficiency of the evidence as to some, but not all, specifications
of negligence must present an appropriate record for review by
asking the jury to make separate factual determinations as to each
specification. Any other rule would unnecessarily jeopardize jury
verdicts that are otherwise fully supported by the record on the
mere theoretical possibility that the jury based its decision on
unsupported specifications. We will not allow litigants to play
procedural brinkmanship with the jury system and take advantage
of uncertainties they could well have avoided.
McCord, 873 F.2d at 1274. We agree with this reasoning. Defendants often may
have an incentive not to request a special verdict in order to strategically save a
ground for appeal; this is inefficient and unfair to plaintiffs, who should not be
forced to endure a second trial when the rules of procedure provide a solution.
While we do not know whether Dr. Petelin refrained from requesting a special
verdict in this case in order to save a ground for appeal, we see no reason to
deviate from Dixson, which places the burden to request a special verdict squarely
on the appellant in cases such as this, where insufficiency of the evidence is
-13-
asserted regarding some, but not all, of the factual theories contained in a jury
instruction.
III.
It is uncontested that there was sufficient evidence to support at least one
factual basis of negligence asserted by Mrs. Pratt. Because Dr. Petelin did not
request a special verdict to indicate which factual theory or theories the jury
based its verdict on, we are unable to conclude that the jury rested its decision on
one of the three allegedly insufficiently supported factual theories. Accordingly,
we AFFIRM.
-14-