Citation Numbers: 115 N.W. 921, 138 Iowa 205
Judges: SHERWIN, J.
Filed Date: 4/10/1908
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 1/12/2023
The defendants, Wm. M. Morton and L. B. Morton, are physicians practicing their profession under the firm name of Morton Morton in Iowa Falls and vicinity. Early in January, 1905, Dr. W. M. Morton, the senior member of the firm, was called to the plaintiff's home in Iowa Falls for the purpose of treating the plaintiff professionally. He made a thorough examination of her condition, and determined that a surgical operation was necessary. He also suggested that it would be safer and more convenient to perform the operation at the hospital located near the plaintiff's home, and undertook to and did make the necessary arrangements for performing it there. Soon thereafter the plaintiff was taken to the hospital by Dr. W. M. Morton. She was given a room where she dressed for the operating table, and was then taken to the operating room in the story above by one of the attendants who was fitting herself for a nurse. The plaintiff was then laid on the operating table, and the defendant Dr. L. B. Morton administered the anÆsthetic, and the defendant Dr. Wm. M. Morton performed the operation. After the operation, the plaintiff was taken from the operating table and placed on a car or stretcher for the purpose of taking her to her room on the floor below. Both of the defendants assisted in placing her on the car. The car was about six feet long and had six rubber-tired wheels, two large wheels in the center, and two smaller ones at each end. When either set of end wheels was resting on the floor, the car inclined in that direction. After the plaintiff had been placed on the car, Dr. *Page 207 Wm. M. Morton left the operating room for the surgeon's dressing room, and Dr. L. B. Morton and Miss Klein, the nurse who had shown the plaintiff to the operating room, rolled the car into the elevator room for the purpose of taking it to the room below on the elevator, the doctor being in front of the car and the nurse behind it. When they reached the elevator room, they found the elevator door wide open and the elevator below. The elevator room was only six or seven feet square, and the car on which the plaintiff rested was stopped with the front end thereof resting on the wheels and only a foot from the elevator door. After the car had been stopped, Dr. L. B. Morton left it, and stepped to the side of the elevator shaft for the purpose of bringing the elevator to their floor. The machinery did not at once respond to his efforts, whereupon Miss Klein, the nurse, told the defendant that she would go and call the janitor. She then left the car, and, after she had gotten some seven or eight feet therefrom, the defendant said to her, "Never mind, I can get it from here." When Miss Klein turned to go back into the elevator room, the car was just rolling into the elevator shaft. She reached it, but too late to save the plaintiff, who was still unconscious, and they were both precipitated to the floor below some fifteen feet. For injuries received in the fall, the plaintiff brings this suit.
At the close of the evidence the defendants moved for a directed verdict, and the motion was overruled. It is now urged that the evidence is not sufficient to support a verdict against either of the defendants, and that the court erred in denying the motion. It is said that the accident was not one which the defendant L. B. Morton ought reasonably to have foreseen might occur as the result of his act, and that a mere failure to guard against an accident which could not reasonably have been expected is not negligence. The evidence tends to show, however, that the defendant L. B. Morton had, before this particular time, assisted in operations at the same hospital, and had also assisted in removing the *Page 208 patients operated upon from the operating room by means of the same cart and elevator. It must therefore be presumed that he was familiar with the size and construction of the cart used in the present instance and with the conditions surrounding the elevator and elevator room. It is shown that the peculiar construction of the car, the end wheels being lower than the center ones, made it very easy to start. The floor in the elevator was cement, and the wheels of the car were equipped with rubber tires, making a combination well calculated to overcome friction. The elevator door was wide open when the car was stopped by the defendant L. B. Morton with its front end within a foot of the elevator shaft. The plaintiff was at the time unconscious, and hence wholly unable to look out for herself or appreciate the danger of her position. Notwithstanding these dangerous conditions, the defendant not only left the car himself, but, after being advised by Miss Klein that she had also left it, he paid no attention to it, and a slight movement of the plaintiff started it toward the open shaft.
The appellants' position on this branch of the case is unsound for two reasons. In the first place, it may well be said that just such a result might reasonably be expected to follow the leaving of such a vehicle in so dangerous a place. Indeed, it seems to us that an accident might almost be expected to follow as a matter of course. The car was easily started, and even unconscious persons not infrequently use their physical power; therefore a reasonably careful person would guard against these conditions singly or combined. In the second place, negligence does not depend upon the question whether the result of an act might reasonably have been foreseen.
IV. Instructions 2, 3, and 4 asked by the defendants were properly refused because they embodied the same principle we hold unsound in the first division of this opinion.
V. Practically all of the instructions given are complained of, but we find no reversible error therein. The judgment should be, and it is,affirmed.