Daily Blast January 12, 2012

In a new opinion out of the Fifth Appellate District, the appellate court held that a medical laboratory owes no duty to directly inform a patient of lab results when the patient’s physician ordered the test. In Walker v. Sonora Regional Medical Center (Jan. 12, 2011, F060420) ___ Cal.App.4th ___, the court affirmed a summary judgment in favor of the Sonora Regional Medical Center, a hospital, and dismissed plaintiffs’ claim of negligence. Plaintiff, a mother, gave birth to a child with cystic fibrosis after her physician failed to inform her that she tested positive as a carrier of cystic fibrosis. Plaintiffs contended that the hospital was negligent in not directly informing the mother of her positive test result. After the trial court affirmed summary judgment in favor of defendant, the Court of Appeal affirmed.

The Court of Appeal held that a medical laboratory owes no duty to a plaintiff to report laboratory results. Relying on a number of California statutes, the court held that a laboratory only has a duty to report results to the physician that ordered the test, not the patient herself. The court also held that imposing such a duty would interfere with the existing patient-physician relationship.

The appellate court also rejected plaintiffs’ alternative theories of liability. The court held that plaintiffs failed to establish any triable issue of material fact as to their theory that the formatting of the lab results made in unclear that the mother tested positive because no evidence was presented that the formatting was a substantial factor in the physician’s failure to inform the mother of the results. The court also rejected plaintiffs’ argument that the Hospital was vicariously liable for the physician’s negligence because the physician could not be an agent of the Hospital when the patient was never treated on hospital grounds and did not refer the patient to the physician.

Walker should prove useful to limit the liability of medical laboratories in lawsuits brought by patients.

Related Practices

• Appellate