A Repudiated Consent Opens The Door To Medical Battery Suit
posted on February 12th, 2008 in Medical Battery by clintWhat happens when the patient repudiates his consent for surgery? The result is a medical battery claim. In Holt v. Alexander, 2005 WL 94370 (Tenn.Ct.App.), the plaintiff went to the hospital suffering from a kidney stone, and was admitted for observation. The next morning, he was told that he was scheduled to undergo a procedure to remove the stone. The defendant physician came to see the plaintiff and told him that he would be performing an invasive procedure, which required significant recovery time. The plaintiff then asked the defendant physician whether his treating urologist “had approved of the procedure.” The defendant physician told the plaintiff that he had spoken with the treating urologist, who approved the procedure. Therefore, the plaintiff signed a consent form.
After surgery, the plaintiff later learned that the defendant had misrepresented the facts to him prior to obtaining consent. The defendant did not speak with the treating urologist. The treating urologist had not approved the procedure in advance. The plaintiff sued the defendant for medical battery. The patient repudiated his consent, by claiming that it was induced under false pretenses. The Court of Appeals held that a fact issue existed as to whether the plaintiff’s consent for surgery was vitiated by the defendant’s failure to get approval for the surgery from the treating urologist.
This case is a very rare episode. There is no other reported case in Tennessee where a patient consented to surgery on condition that a treating physician approved the surgery in the first place. Nonetheless, this case should be remembered for the time-honored principle that a patient has the right to control his body. The lesson here is twofold: (1) a patient may repudiate his consent if the physician misrepresented facts in order to get it, and (2) consent can be conditional.