St. Joseph Hospital v. Wolff

Justice O’NEILL,

concurring, joined by Chief Justice PHILLIPS.

Although I do not agree with all of the plurality’s analysis, I concur in the judgment because I do not believe St. Joseph and the Foundation shared the requisite community of pecuniary interest in the residency program to establish a joint enterprise. I also believe that the Program Contract vested supervision and control of residents’ patient care at Brackenridge with the Foundation’s teaching staff, who in turn were under the supervision and control of the Foundation’s Director of Surgical Education, Dr. Harshaw. Because teaching through patient care was the integrated residency program’s primary purpose, and because control over this aspect of the program was allocated to the Foundation, the parties did not share an equal right of control in the enterprise’s common purpose so as to impose joint enterprise liability. For this same reason, Dr. Villafani was the Foundation’s borrowed servant as a matter of law. Finally, *545I do not believe Wolff is entitled to recover under the other liability theories asserted. For these reasons, I concur in the judgment.