Chicago Hospital's Negligence Clarified by Illinois Appellate Court
The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed a Cook County jury's $2.7 million verdict for institutional negligence against Loyola Medical Center in a Chicago transplant error case. Longnecker v. Loyola University Medical Center, 2008 WL 2550686 (1st Dist., June 25).
The issue in Longnecker was whether Loyola University Medical Center was negligent when they transplanted the decedent with a severely hypertrophic replacement heart. The harvested heart was severely diseased and was only considered for transplantation because the harvesting doctors did not examine it. Despite the diseased state of the new heart, the decedent's heart surgeon went ahead with the transplant. The decedent died without ever waking up from the surgery.
Most times we think of medical negligence cases as those caused by doctors or medical personnel individually. But a hospital or institution is held to the same standard of care as a doctor or a physician. So when evaluating a case for institutional negligence one asks what a reasonably careful hospital would and should do under similar circumstances. Illinois Pattern Jury Instructions, Civil, No. 105.03.01 (1995). Jones v. Chicago HMO Limited of Illinois, 191 Ill. 2d 278 (2000).
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