Court of Appeals: Sufficient Expert Evidence When Not "Utterly Irrational" That Hard To Quantify "Larger Stroke" Arose From Malpractice

In Lang v Newman 2009 NY Slip Op 04696 the trial plaintiff experienced symptoms and was transported for treatment to hospital where she was examined by defendant doctors in succession, the latter of which ordered a CT scan, but not admit her for treatment and gave her headache medication after she declined to undertake a more invasive diagnostic procedure.

Shortly after, after ordering the plaintiff undertake an MRI, the plaintiffs primary physician (not a defendant) diagnosed her as having suffered a stroke and admitted the plaintiff to a different hospital where she was given anti-coagulant medication.

The plaintiff commenced an action against the defendant doctors and their medical groups and was successful against the second doctor (who had assumed her care on the first doctor's ending of his shift) on the grounds that she had suffered permanent injuries from the stroke, by reason that she was not admitted to hospital for further diagnosis and treatment. The plaintiff was not successful on grounds that the doctors had failed to administer an anti-coagulant drug.

The Appellate Division affirmed the trial verdict, over a 2 justice dissent.

The Court of Appeals affirmed:

"Evidence is legally insufficient to support a verdict if "there is simply no valid line of reasoning and permissible inferences which could possibly lead rational men to the conclusion reached by the jury on the basis of the evidence presented at trial" (Cohen v Hallmark Cards, 45 NY2d 493, 499 [1978]). Plaintiff's expert testified that if Firman had admitted plaintiff to the hospital rather than discharging her, the stroke would have been diagnosed, she would have been given an anticoagulant, and the failure to administer that medicine resulted in "a little larger stroke than she should have had if she was properly treated." Despite the fact that the expert also stated that it was "very hard to quantify" precisely how much additional damage plaintiff suffered as a result of Firman's negligence, we cannot say that the jury's finding of liability on this theory was "utterly irrational" (id.) or that no basis of proof existed to support the verdict. Consequently, the verdict was based on legally sufficient evidence."