Hawkins v. Genesee Hospital

Order unanimously reversed, with costs, and motion denied. Memorandum: Plaintiff’s decedent died of cardiac arrest shortly after receiving a general anesthesia containing a mixture of oxygen and nitrous oxide. Two weeks later another patient at defendant hospital died of nitrous oxide poisoning after being anesthetized. Shortly thereafter a third patient almost died while being anesthetized before it was discovered that the hoses to the oxygen tank and the nitrous oxide tank had been switched and the error corrected. Plaintiff therefore seeks to establish that decedent’s cardiac arrest was…