Medical Equipment: Evidence Of Adverse Patient-Care Event Must Be Preserved, Court Rules
Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession
April 1997
Quick Summary: After an adverse patient-care event related to a potentially faulty piece of medical equipment, a healthcare provider cannot discard, alter or destroy the equipment in question, or allow another party such as the manufacturer to do so.
A healthcare provider cannot intentionally or negligently impair the right of the patient or the parents or legal guardian of the patient to file a civil products liability lawsuit for damages.
If a healthcare provider’s failure to preserve the physical evidence impairs the patient’s ability to pursue monetary damages in a civil lawsuit, the healthcare provider itself can be sued directly as a defendant and ruled liable to pay the damages.
A prospective civil action is a valuable expectancy which the courts must protect from interference. A legal cause of action for spoliation of the evidence is the legal mechanism the courts have developed for this, whether or not the interference is intentional. DISTRICT COURT OF APPEAL OF FLORIDA, 1997.
A pediatric patient went into cardiac arrest while under general anesthesia for surgical correction of a drooping eyelid. He was placed on a respirator in intensive care, but never revived, and died within ten days. The hospital’s internal risk management assessment laid probable blame on an excessive dose of halothane anesthetic from a faulty vaporizer used during the surgery.
A representative from the vaporizer’s manufacturer was given the opportunity to disassemble it, apparently to determine if it was in fact defective.
The effect of allowing the manufacturer to disassemble the vaporizer after the fact was to deprive the parents of the opportunity to proceed with a products liability lawsuit against the manufacturer, whether or not the hospital or the manufacturer had acted in good faith.
Without the vaporizer having been preserved in the same exact condition as it was in the operating room when the apparent overdose took place, there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a products liability case. However, as the District Court of Appeal of Florida pointed out, the law recognizes the right of a patient, parent, guardian or other legal representative to proceed under these circumstances with a civil lawsuit directly against the healthcare provider for what is termed spoliation of the evidence.
When there is proof that physical evidence needed for a potentially rewarding products liability lawsuit has been destroyed, intentionally or not, the healthcare provider must make up the loss. In this case, the court computed that the parents’ products liability lawsuit against the manufacturer would have been worth approximately $8.3 million, had they had the vaporizer intact and been able to proceed, and entered judgment against the hospital. Hospital vs. Brinson, 685 So. 2d 33 (Fla. App., 1997).