[DO NOT PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT FILED
________________________ U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
No. 10-12927 MARCH 22, 2011
JOHN LEY
________________________ CLERK
D.C. Docket No. 2:07-cv-00349-JEO
ELLIS M. HAMMONDS,
individually and by and through his
Next Legal Friend, Norman E. Hammonds,
lllllllllllllllllllll Plaintiff - Appellant,
versus
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
through its agents, servants and employees
or agents, servants, and employees of its
agency,
lllllllllllllllllllll Defendant - Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Alabama
________________________
(March 22, 2011)
Before CARNES and PRYOR, Circuit Judges, and SEITZ,* District Judge.
PER CURIAM:
We must determine in this case whether there is liability on a medical
negligence claim when the risk giving rise to a duty of care did not cause the harm
but the harm might have been serendipitously avoided if the standard of care had
not been breached. To resolve this issue we apply Alabama law, which for both
the duty and proximate cause elements of a negligence claim requires the risk of
harm to be foreseeable. Foreseeability is inconsistent with serendipity.
I.
In December 2003 Ellis Hammonds, who is a veteran, had bilateral hip
replacements. On October 4, 2005, Hammonds went to the Veterans
Administration Medical Center in Birmingham, Alabama to see a dentist. Dr.
Dennis Rafferty did an oral examination and prescribed antibiotics to Hammonds
before cleaning his teeth. Antibiotics were necessary because of the risk that
Hammonds might develop an infection in his artificial hip joints as a result of the
teeth cleaning.
*
Honorable Patricia A. Seitz, United States District Judge for the Southern District of
Florida, sitting by designation.
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On November 3, 2005, Hammonds was scheduled to have what he describes
as “a sedative-induced dental procedure.” Before the scheduled date for the
procedure, Dr. Cashion, a staff dentist at the VA Medical Center, prescribed
antibiotics for Hammonds. A little over a week before Hammonds’ November 3
appointment, Dr. Rex Adams instructed him to take four antibiotic capsules one
hour before the dental procedure.
Dr. Adams, who was Hammonds’ treating dentist for the November 3
procedure, later testified in his deposition that for a patient who had undergone a
hip replacement the standard of care required prophylactic antibiotic therapy,
specifically two grams of amoxicillin one hour before the dental appointment. If
the patient said he had not taken the antibiotic, the drug would be administered,
and the dental procedure would be delayed for an hour. Hammonds testified in his
deposition that after his mouth had been “numbed” and the procedure was
underway, he remembered the antibiotic prescription and told Dr. Adams that he
had not taken it. He was given the antibiotic, but the procedure was in progress
and there was no one hour delay.**
**
In Hammonds’ medical records Dr. Adams noted that he asked Hammonds whether he
had taken the medication, and Hammonds responded that he had. In our review of the decision
to grant summary judgment to the defendant, however, “all facts are viewed, and all factual
disputes are resolved, in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Johnson v. Univ. Health
Servs., Inc., 161 F.3d 1334, 1337 n.5 (11th Cir. 1998).
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A few weeks after the November 3 dental procedure Hammonds, who had
no history of heart problems, was diagnosed with infective endocarditis, which is
an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart. Hammonds did not develop any
complications related to his hip replacements.
II.
Hammonds filed a lawsuit against the United States under the Federal Tort
Claims Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2671 et seq., alleging dental negligence. After the
discovery period had closed, the United States filed a motion for summary
judgment. In ruling on that motion the district court correctly observed as an
initial matter that Alabama substantive law applies to Hammonds’ FTCA claim.
See Ochran v. United States, 273 F.3d 1315, 1317 (11th Cir. 2001) (explaining
that “the [FTCA’s] reference to the ‘law of the place’ means law of the State—the
source of substantive liability under the FTCA.”). If there is no state law liability,
there is no FTCA liability. Id.
The district court noted that Hammonds had presented evidence of the
applicable standard of care through Dr. Adams’ testimony. The court explained:
[Dr. Adams] stated in his deposition that the standard of care in
November 2005 with respect to prophylactic antibiotic therapy for
patients who had undergone hip replacement surgery like the plaintiff
was two grams of amoxicillin one hour prior to the dental
appointment. Additionally, Dr. Adams stated that if a patient had not
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taken the antibiotic one hour prior to the procedure, the antibiotic
should be administered and the procedure delayed for one hour.
The court determined that Dr. Adams’ “failure to follow the testified-to protocol
when dealing with certain hip replacement patients exposed the plaintiff to a risk
of harm from infection in his hip joints.” Even so, the court rejected Hammonds’
efforts to “transfer that risk of harm to the risk of developing a ‘bacterial-related
[infection] triggered by the dental procedure.’” It concluded that “it would be
inappropriate under the circumstances to impose such a general duty.” The court
held that “there was no legal duty to give the plaintiff an antibiotic regime[n]
preceding the . . . dental procedure beyond the risk associated with the hip
replacement.”
Hammonds later filed a Rule 59 motion to alter or amend the judgment,
which the district court denied. The court reiterated that there was a question of
fact about whether Dr. Adams had breached the standard of care when he failed to
give Hammonds two grams of amoxicillin one hour before his dental procedure in
order to prevent infection in his artificial hip joints. The court concluded,
however, that “this was not a question of material fact, because even if Dr. Adams
failed to follow the standard, the injury Plaintiff suffered, bacterial endocarditis,
was not foreseeable at the time of the procedure.” The reasoning was that
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Hammonds had no history of heart disease, so the injury that occurred was
unforeseeable, and under Alabama law Dr. Adams had no duty to prevent an
unforeseeable injury. The court went on to state that “Dr. Adams’ duty was to
prevent only the injury that was foreseeable to him at the time of the dental
procedure, i.e., infection to Plaintiff’s hip replacement joint.” Furthermore, “were
it not for Plaintiff’s risk of developing infection to his hip replacement joint, Dr.
Adams would not have administered the antibiotic in the first place.”
III.
“We review de novo the district court’s grant of a motion for summary
judgment, considering all of the evidence and the inferences it may yield in the
light most favorable to the nonmoving party.” Ellis v. England, 432 F.3d 1321,
1325 (11th Cir. 2005). Hammonds contends that the foreseeable risk of harm from
the failure to properly administer the amoxicillin was the development of an
infection, regardless of its location in the body. He asserts that Dr. Adams’ duty
was to prevent all foreseeable infections, not just a single one, and that an
unintended benefit of properly administered antibiotics would have been the
prevention of infective endocarditis.
The United States contends that because Hammonds had no history of heart
trouble his development of infective endocarditis was unforeseeable, and the VA
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Medical Center owed him no duty to take prophylactic measures against the risk of
that injury. Hammonds has offered no evidence suggesting that a risk of infection
in his hip joints indicates any risk of developing infective endocarditis. The
United States asserts that Dr. Adams had no reason to think that the dental
procedure would subject Hammonds to a wide variety of bodily infections. Hip
joint infection was the only infection that posed a risk, and that particular risk was
the only reason a prophylactic antibiotic was prescribed.
Under Alabama law “the question of whether a legal duty exists is
essentially a question of law for the court, to be resolved by determining whether
the injury was foreseeable.” Keebler v. Winfield Carraway Hosp., 531 So. 2d 841,
844 (Ala. 1988) (citation omitted). Applying that rule, the Alabama Supreme
Court has held that a physician’s duty to guard against his patient’s committing
suicide depends upon the foreseeability of the suicide. See id. at 845. Charles
Keebler had been treated at a hospital for a possible overdose of valium and
alcohol and then was released from the hospital’s care. Id. at 845. Keebler was
taken to jail where he hanged himself. Id. at 843–44. His wife filed a lawsuit
against the hospital as well as the doctor and nurse who treated Keebler,*** alleging
***
The plaintiff also brought claims against the City of Winfield and some city employees,
but those claims were settled before trial. Id. at 842.
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wrongful death based on medical malpractice.**** She asserted that the defendants
had a duty to continue medical treatment and to prohibit Keebler from leaving the
hospital. See id. at 844. The court observed that Keebler had not been admitted to
the hospital as a result of a suicide attempt, had no history of suicidal tendencies,
and had not displayed any at the hospital. Id. at 845. Because Keebler’s suicide
was not foreseeable, there was no legal duty to provide continued medical care in
order to prevent it, and the trial court correctly entered a directed verdict in favor
of the defendants. Id.
In a later decision, the Alabama Supreme Court clarified the function of
foreseeability in analyzing the duty element of a medical malpractice claim. See
Patton v. Thompson, 958 So. 2d 303, 310–11 (Ala. 2006).***** The court explained
****
Dental malpractice claims are subject to the same analysis as other medical
malpractice claims because, as the Alabama Supreme Court has recognized, the Alabama
Medical Liability Act of 1987, Ala. Code §§ 6-5-540 through -552, “specifically includes dentists
within the definition of ‘health care providers’ covered under the AMLA.” Schuffert v. Morgan,
777 So. 2d 87, 88 n.1 (Ala. 2000).
*****
A recent Alabama Supreme Court decision discusses Patton and the issue of
foreseeability in the medical malpractice context. See Breland ex rel. Breland v. Rich, — So. 3d
—, 2011 WL 835065, at *19–20 (Ala. March 11, 2011). Even though the Breland opinion
recognizes that suicide cases are different from other medical malpractice cases, the decision
does not overrule Alabama precedent requiring foreseeability as part of the duty and proximate
cause elements of a non-suicide medical malpractice claim. See id. at *20. The Alabama
Supreme Court explained:
The present case did not involve a suicide. The duty of health-care providers,
when a patient may attempt to harm himself, contemplates the reasonably
foreseeable occurrence of self harm, and such self-destructive conduct involves
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that in the Keebler case: “[T]he duty the emergency-room physician owed to the
deceased did not include a standard of care to protect against or to prevent suicide,
because there was an absence of factors that would have made the patient’s suicide
foreseeable, thereby triggering such a duty.” Id. at 309. For the element of
proximate cause in a medical malpractice claim, “the plaintiff must demonstrate
that the alleged negligence probably caused, rather than only possibly caused, the
plaintiff’s injury.” Id. at 311 (quotation marks omitted). The court also
recognized that, while duty is generally a question of law, see id. at 310–11,
“proximate cause is almost always a question of fact.” Id. at 312 (quotation marks
and alterations omitted).
Although the existence of proximate cause is “almost always” a question of
fact, almost always is not always. The Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed
summary judgment for a defendant on a plaintiff’s negligence claims when the
the necessity of precautions or safeguards to attempt to prevent such harm. Here,
[the plaintiff] was not required to prove that Dr. Rich knew or should have known
that it was foreseeable that the “safeguard” of having both an eye form and an
eye-exam book in the [neonatal intensive care unit] would fail.
Id. The patient in that case was at risk of developing retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), and her
treating pediatric ophthalmologist, Dr. Rich, put her on the list of patients at risk for ROP. Id. at
*1. It was foreseeable that Dr. Rich’s failure to record information correctly in the eye exam
book might lead to a failure to provide, or at least a delay in providing, necessary follow-up
examinations to detect ROP, which then might lead to the patient’s injury (blindness). In the
present case, by contrast, there was no evidence that Dr. Adams’ failure to properly administer a
prophylactic antibiotic might foreseeably lead to Hammonds’ heart infection because Hammonds
had no history of heart trouble.
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plaintiffs’ injuries were not foreseeable and for that reason no proximate cause
existed. See Thompson v. Gaier, 512 So. 2d 775 (Ala. 1987); accord Thompson v.
Patton, 6 So. 3d 1129, 1135 (Ala. 2008) (affirming judgment as a matter of law
granted in favor of the defendant and explaining that “[u]nder Alabama law,
evidence showing only a probability of a possibility is not sufficient to establish
proximate causation in a negligence action alleging medical malpractice”).
In Thompson a pizza delivery driver accidentally drove his car onto the
Thompsons’ property, knocking down their mailbox and nearly hitting one of the
Thompson children. 512 So. 2d at 775. The child’s father, who was recovering
from back surgery, turned quickly to see “the commotion,” and re-injured his back.
Id. at 776. The Thompsons sued the pizza delivery driver and his employer for
“negligently operating a motor vehicle and negligently maintaining and enforcing
a policy of pizza delivery.” Id. at 775.
The two Thompson children who were present when the accident occurred
could not claim injuries because “in reply to an interrogatory concerning their
claimed injuries, [they] responded “N/A” or not applicable.” Id. As for their
father, the court held that his injuries “could not be viewed as for[e]seeable and as
a proximate result of [the defendant’s] driving the car onto the property.” Id. at
776. The mother’s injuries were not foreseeable either, because she was not
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present when the accident occurred. Id. As a result, the court affirmed summary
judgment in favor of the defendants. Id. (“[A]s the plaintiffs have adduced no
evidence to show that the defendants proximately caused their injuries, the trial
court correctly granted the summary judgment and that judgment is due to be
affirmed.”).
In the present case the only harm that reasonably could have been foreseen
from Hammonds’ failure to take the prophylactic antibiotic as directed was an
infection in his artificial hip joints. There is no evidence that he showed any signs
of risk of any other type of infection. Even if a properly administered prophylactic
antibiotic might have prevented the infective endocarditis, that injury was one that
could not have been foreseen. Regardless of whether unforeseeability is viewed as
a failure to establish a genuine issue of material fact on the duty element or on the
proximate cause element, the result is the same. The district court correctly
granted summary judgment in favor of the United States.
AFFIRMED.
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