Shivani Gadhavi –
Published On: December 1, 2021 at 19:50 IST
On 30th November, 2021 the Supreme Court of India passed an order in relation with an earlier order passed by a National Consumer Commission in 2010 which held a doctor liable for being negligent while performing surgery on a patient which caused the latter’s death.
The case pertains to a man named Dinesh Jaiswal who died on the course of his ongoing surgery regarding Gangrene in his limbs, in 1998. The family of the deceased claimed that he died due to negligence on the part of the Hospital being unable to provide certain services in absence of a senior doctor, operation theater and a broken angiography machine.
The Bombay Hospital and Medical Research filed an Appeal challenging the verdict of the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission to pay ₹14.18 lakh to the family of the deceased Dinesh Jaiswal. The Hospital denied all the allegations made against it.
The Supreme Court Bench of Justices Hemant Gupta and V. Ramasubramaniam stated in the Order, “In spite of the treatment, if the patient had not survived, the doctors cannot be blamed as even the doctors with the best of their abilities cannot prevent the inevitable…The doctors are expected to take reasonable care but none of the professionals can assure that the patient would overcome the surgical procedures.”
The Bench further opined, “The patient was in a critical condition and if he could not survive even after surgery, the blame cannot be passed on to the hospital and the doctor who provided all possible treatment within their means and capacity.”
In 2010 the family of the deceased was paid INR 5 Lakh as compensation by the Apex Court, when the family agreed to consider the hospital’s plea. The Bench stated that this amount is ex-gratia and would not be paid by the Hospital.