Kearns v. Ellis

1. It was the theory of the plaintiff’s case on the counts as to which she had a verdict that the failure of the defendant, while out of town, to designate a member of the hospital staff to attend to the plaintiff’s decedent (her husband) had contributed to the latter’s death. The defendant, Dr. Ellis, is a cardiac-thoracic surgeon who operated on the decedent (Kearns) to place a prosthetic mitral valve in his heart. Fourteen days after surgery, on April 7, 1970, at about 9:30 a.m., and while Dr. Ellis was in Washington, D.C., Kearns took a cataclysmic turn for the worse. By 11:45 a.m., there…