Williams v. Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, Inc.

Citations

• 211 Conn. App. 610

Syllabus

The plaintiff, as administrator of the estate of the decedent, sought to recover damages for medical malpractice from the defendant B, an emergency medicine physician who treated the decedent for injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident that ultimately led to his death. At the conclusion of the plaintiff's case-in-chief, the plaintiff moved to admit into evidence certain excerpts from a medical text known as the Advanced Trauma Life Support guidelines, which the plaintiff contended constituted excep- tions to the rule against hearsay as statements in learned treatises, pursuant to the applicable provision (§ 8-3 (8)) of the Connecticut Code of Evidence. The basis for the plaintiff's motion was that two of his medical experts had recognized those guidelines as an authoritative treatise in the field of trauma medicine and had relied on specific por- tions of the guidelines in providing their expert testimony. The court denied the plaintiff's motion on the ground that the relevant excerpts could confuse the jurors as to the relevant standard of care. Following the jury's verdict for B, the plaintiff appealed to this court, claiming that § 8-3 (8) creates a presumption of admissibility, that the guidelines met the requirements for admission, and, accordingly, that the trial court lacked a legal basis upon which to exclude them. Held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in precluding admission of the guidelines excerpts; although Connecticut permits the admission of learned trea- tises into evidence, the court had the discretion to exclude evidence that carried the danger of misunderstanding or misapplication by the jury, and the court correctly determined that, had the excerpts been admitted, the jury could mistakenly have assessed B's conduct only in light of the guidelines rather than determining whether B deviated from the standard of care in treating the decedent, as, throughout the trial, the plaintiff repeatedly and erroneously contended that the g