Flores v. Liu
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After a surgeon competently performed a gastric re-sleeving surgery on plaintiff, she filed suit against him for negligence in recommending gastric re-sleeve surgery as a viable course of treatment and in not obtaining her informed consent to the surgery.
The Court of Appeal held that a physician may be liable for negligently recommending a course of treatment if (1) that course stems from a misdiagnosis of the patient's underlying medical condition, or (2) all reasonable physicians in the relevant medical community would agree that the probable risks of that treatment outweigh its probable benefits. The court also held that a patient's informed consent to a negligently recommended course of treatment does not negate the physician's liability for his negligence in recommending it. In this case, although the trial court erred by instructing the jury that plaintiff's informed consent negated any liability for the surgeon's recommendation, the court concluded that this error did not prejudice her case because her negligent recommendation theory should never have gone to the jury in the first place. In this case, the evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to plaintiff, does not support the conclusion that the surgeon was negligent in recommending that plaintiff undergo the gastric re-sleeve surgery where she suffered from morbid obesity. Accordingly, the court affirmed the judgment.
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