Hubbard

A jury returned a $77,000 verdict in favor óf plaintiff John L. Hubbard after trial of Hubbard’s complaint for damages for medical malpractice against defendant Travis H. Calvin, Jr., M.D. Calvin appeals the judgment entered on the verdict after the trial court denied his motions for mistrial and for new trial.

The action arose out of Calvin’s June 1972 decision to perform, and his technique in performing, a cerebral angiogram, also called an arteriogram, on Hubbard who had an electric shock in March and was experiencing vertigo. When Hubbard awoke from the general anesthetic administered for the arteriogram he was paralyzed on his left side. The severity of the paralysis subsided so that by the time of trial, four years after the arteriogram, he was able to walk with the use of a leg brace.

Calvin contends the court reversibly erred in giving Hubbard’s requested special instruction reading: “If you find that the technique used by the defendant, Calvin, in the performance of the arteriogram was not approved by a respectable minority of neurosurgeons in 1972, you are instructed to find that the defendant, Calvin, violated his duty to use the care and skill ordinarily…