Payne v. Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital

EDMONDS, J.,

pro tem.

This is an action for damages alleged to have been sustained by plaintiff while a patient in the hospital operated by the defendant.

Plaintiff went to the hospital for an abdominal operation, which was performed by his own physician. He was thereafter cared for by his physician and by nurses employed by him or his physician. Plaintiff remained in the hospital until the wound healed, when he returned to his home in Los Angeles.

Some time later plaintiff experienced great physical discomfort, and in the endeavor to find a cause for the difficulty the old incision was opened up and a toothpick taken out. Later some cotton was found in plaintiff’s body, and plaintiff’s charge of negligence is that the toothpick and cotton found their way into his body while in the defendant’s hospital as a result of its negligence in furnishing what are commonly termed “toothpick applicators”; that is to say, toothpicks with cotton on each end, for use in bandaging his wound.

The verdict of the jury was in favor of plaintiff for $35,000. Thereafter defendant moved for a new trial, and the trial judge made an order purporting to grant the motion. But this order the Supreme Court held to be ineffectual because not filed within the time provided by section 660 of the Code of Civil Procedure.

(Payne

v.

Hunt,

214 Cal. 605 [7 Pac. (2d) 302].) Therefore it must be held that by operation of law, the motion was denied.

Both parties agree that in a case such as this, where the hospital does not furnish the services of either physicians or nurses, that its duty is to exercise ordinary care to furnish to the attendants of the patient suitable supplies, equipment and facilities commensurate with the requirements of his case, and to use reasonable care in providing the same for the use of those charged with his care and treatment. All of the medical testimony was to the effect 'that the use of toothpick applicators with surgical dressings

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