Schuster v. St. Vincent Hospital

The appellant’s basic contention, and upon the determination of which must hinge our decision of the case, is that the duty of a hospital toward a patient in respect to the custodial care given him is a duty higher than that of ordinary care. This higher duty, he argues, should be expressed as a duty of reasonable care. The trial judge concurred in plaintiff’s reasoning, but denied plaintiff’s motions on the ground that his instructions to the jury had made that distinction clear— that the jury was charged with assessing the hospital’s negligence in terms of that higher duty; but on that…