Dorothy R. McCord v. John Patrick Maguire

Dorothy R. McCord sued Dr. John Ma-guire for medical negligence. The court submitted eight specifications of negligence to the jury, which returned a general verdict in the amount of $1,856,648.39. Maguire appeals. He contends that four of the specifications of negligence submitted to the jury were unsupported by substantial evidence. As the general verdict may have rested on one or more of those four specifications, he claims that the jury verdict must be reversed.

Facts

On February 6, 1985, Maguire performed elective surgery to remove McCord’s gallbladder. During the course of the surgery, Maguire performed an x-ray procedure called a cholangiogram to determine whether there were any stones in the common bile duct. In this procedure, dye is injected via a catheter into the common bile duct and x-ray pictures are taken. Maguire inserted the catheter in the wrong place, and thus was unable to obtain a useful x-ray. He retracted the catheter and injected 25 cc’s of dye into the bile duct. Maguire then took a second x-ray, saw what he thought was a gallstone, and proceeded to surgically explore the duct. This surgical procedure is not routinely performed because it greatly…