Nevada Medical Malpractice Fact Patterns – Part II

Here are further case facts from some of Nevada’s most notable medical malpractice cases:

Common-law professional medical standard for informed consent, rather than a patient-oriented standard of informed consent, applies to the chiropractic field. Bronneke v. Rutherford, 120 Nev. 230, 89 P.3d 40 (2004).

Consent to treatment may be express or implied. By seeking chiropractic treatment, Plaintiff’s consent to the particular technique may be implied because as a practical matter, health professionals cannot be required to obtain express consent before each touch or test they perform on a patient. Bronneke v. Rutherford, 120 Nev. 230, 89 P.3d 40 (2004).

An attorney had probable cause for filing a malpractice action against physicians, and thus did not commit tort of malicious prosecution, because the reasonable attorney believed that action was legally tenable. The fact that the patient’s condition continued to deteriorate after treatment by a first group of physicians, but immediately improved after treatment by a second group of physicians, would lead a reasonable person to believe that the first group did not adequately treat the patient. Dutt v. Kremp, 894 P.2d 354, 111 Nev. 567 (1995).

A mother may maintain a medical malpractice action under Nevada law based on her physicians’ failure properly to perform or interpret prenatal examinations when that failure results in the mother losing the opportunity to abort a severely deformed fetus. The Nevada Supreme Court declined to recognize the tort sometimes called “wrongful life.” Greco v. United States, 111 Nev. 405, 893 P.2d 345 (1995).

Negligence may exist in the diagnosis, as well as the treatment, of patients; the degree of care required of physician is the same in either case. Rees v. Roderiques, 101 Nev. 302, 701 P.2d 1017 (1985).