ROBERT COUCH V HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM
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STATE OF MICHIGAN
COURT OF APPEALS
ROBERT COUCH, guardian of ANTHONY
COUCH,
UNPUBLISHED
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v
No. 180423
Wayne Circuit Court
LC No. 92-234063-NH
HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM, d/b/a,
HENRY FORD HOSPITAL,
Defendant-Appellee.
Before: Marilyn Kelly, P.J., and Mackenzie and J. R. Ernst,* JJ.
MARILYN KELLY, P.J. (dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
I agree that plaintiff's expert was unable to identify a specific time period within which surgery
should have been performed. His testimony was that plaintiff's son was stable when examined as an
outpatient on August 29, 1988. Therefore, according to the standard of care, he should have been
scheduled for surgery as soon as reasonably possible after that date. He noted that the chances of a
second hemorrhage vastly increase after an initial hemorrhage, and the untreated condition is equivalent
to a "time bomb" that could explode at any moment. Because defendant failed even to schedule the
surgery, a jury could conclude that it had breached the standard of care to perform surgery as soon as
reasonably possible.
/s/ Marilyn Kelly
* Circuit judge, sitting on the Court of Appeals by assignment.
-1
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