Sobin v. Orthopaedic Sports Specialists, P.C.

Syllabus

The defendant appealed from the trial court's judgment for the plaintiffs, L in her individual capacity and as administrator of the estate of her deceased husband, P, on their claims for wrongful death due to medical negligence and loss of consortium in connection with P's death from a pulmonary embolism that occurred during his recovery from knee replacement surgery performed by an employee of the defendant. The defendant claimed, inter alia, that the court improperly failed to grant a mistrial based on the allegedly inflammatory and unduly prejudicial examination of B, a key witness, by the plaintiffs' counsel. The plaintiffs filed a separate appeal from the court's partial grant of their motion for offer of compromise interest, and the defen- dant cross appealed. The plaintiffs claimed that the court improperly declined to award offer of compromise interest with respect to L's loss of consortium damages, and the defendant claimed that the court should not have awarded any offer of compromise interest because the purported offer of compromise was invalid. Held: The trial court did not abuse its discretion in declining to strike the responses of the plaintiffs' medical expert to certain hypothetical questions asked by the plaintiffs' counsel or to grant any other relief regarding such testimony, as there was ample evidence admitted from which the jury could find the foundational facts underlying the hypothetical questions posed. The trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the defendant's motion for a mistrial alleging that the limited examination of B by the plaintiffs' counsel was unnecessarily inflammatory and intended to prejudice the jury, as any potential prejudice to the defendant resulting from the challenged questioning of B was satisfactorily dissipated by the court's clear and concise curative instruction. This court dismissed as moot the defendant's claim that the trial court improperly precluded its medical expert from providing certain opin