Northeast Alabama Regional Medical Center v. Owens

ON APPLICATION FOR REHEARING

MADDOX, Justice.

This Court’s opinion of May 17, 1991, is withdrawn and the following is substituted therefor.

These are consolidated appeals. A hospital appeals from a judgment entered upon a jury verdict awarding a plaintiff wife $350,000 in compensatory damages for negligence in treating her while she was a patient in the hospital. The hospital makes several claims of error: 1) that the trial judge should have reduced the judgment against it to $100,000, the statutory “cap”;1 2) that the trial court erred in instructing the jury; and 3) that the verdict *1362was…