Articles Tagged with Vicarious Liability

Delivery of a business card to a patient during registration for a surgical procedure does not itself, as a matter of law, constitute meaningful written notice, acknowledged at the time of admission, to a patient that a physician is an independent contractor for which a hospital has no liability arising out of the doctor’s alleged malpractice. This is what the Indiana Court of Appeals recently held in the case of Jernagan v. Indiana Univ. Health.

Richard Jernagan (“Jernagan”) underwent spine surgery at IU Health North Hospital. The anesthesiologist was Dr. Michael Miller, a partner with Anesthesia Consultants of Indianapolis. Prior to the procedure, an IU Health guest relations representative, Mary Mosby (“Mosby”), registered Jernagan and gave Jernagan Dr. Miller’s business card, which stated Dr. Miller’s name, employer, and contact information. Mosby did not tell Jernagan Dr. Miller was an independent contractor and not an employee of the hospital. During the surgery, Jernagan suffered a cardiac arrest requiring resuscitation and admission to the ICU due to a sudden drop in blood pressure and significant blood loss. Jernagan filed a lawsuit against the surgeon and the hospital. A medical review panel found no malpractice on behalf of the named defendants and did not address the conduct of Dr. Miller, who had not been named in the lawsuit. After the hospital filed a second motion for summary judgment, Jernagan filed an expert affidavit as to Dr. Miller and argued the hospital was vicariously liable for his conduct based upon apparent agency pursuant to Sword v. NKC Hospitals, Inc. The trial court granted the hospital’s motion and Jernagan appealed.

The Court of Appeals first resolved a procedural issue concerning the timeliness of Jernagan’s response to the hospital’s motion for summary judgment. There had been an agreement for an extension of time reached between Jernagan and the hospital as noted on an entry to the Chronological Case Summary (CCS) with defense counsel directed to circulate an order regarding the summary judgment deadline. Indiana law has a bright-line rule that, unless a party responds to a motion for summary judgment within the applicable timeframe or requests an extension, a trial court has no discretion to alter the time limits for a response. The Court of Appeals agreed with the trial court’s analysis that the CCS entry’s direction that defense counsel circulate an order was meant to separately express the order stated in the CCS entry, and with Jernagan having requested an extension, which was granted by the trial court, Jernagan’s response was timely.