The man had been cheating on his wife for some time.
One day, she became suspicious and followed her husband to a local trailer park. There she saw a scantily clad female welcome him
with a big kiss and drag him into the trailer.
After waiting an appropriate time – based on her experience with her
soon to be ex-husband - the wife banged on the trailer door demanding to be let
in. The disheveled adulteress opened the
door and insisted that she was home alone.
The wife barged past the trollop and stormed into the bedroom at the end
of the hallway. Not immediately seeing
her husband among the bed sheets, she threw open the bedroom closet door.
In the closet stood her naked husband tangled up among
numerous coat hangers, shoes and skimpy clothes. The wife screamed, “What the (numerous
colorful expletives deleted) are you doing there!”
Faced with this sudden emergency, the husband answered
as best as he could.
“Well,” he stammered, “Everyone’s gotta be somewhere.”
I’m sure he regretted the silly answer, but being
cornered in a closet by his homicidal, screaming wife, I think he did pretty
well for himself. However, he wasn’t
able to defend the adultery charge and the marriage was over.
North Carolina law recognizes the “sudden emergency”
defense. If a person is faced with an
unexpected emergency, the law considers the nature of the emergency in judging
the reasonableness of the person’s conduct.
The defendant is not required to make the “wisest decision”, only a
reasonable choice in view of the circumstances.
For example, assume you are driving northward. Someone driving in the opposite direction on
your street suddenly turns in front of you.
To avoid a collision, you swerve left, hoping to miss cars that may be
traveling near you in the lane to your right and trying not to hit the car that
just turned in front of you.
Unfortunately, you strike the car that turned into your lane. The court would not hold you liable for
damages to the car that you hit. You did
the best you could in the midst of the “sudden emergency.”
The North Carolina courts recently addressed another claim
of “sudden emergency” in a medical negligence action. Ms. Wiggins went into labor in June of
2005. Hospital policy required a vaginal
exam to be performed on a woman in labor before administering Pitocin to her. The drug Pitocin induces and speeds up
labor. The exam would have made sure
that all was well before the drug was given.
Ms. Wiggins’ doctor and nurses ignored that policy.
Five hours after the Pitocin began, a vaginal exam
showed that the baby’s umbilical cord had “prolapsed” into the mother’s vagina
cutting off oxygen to the baby. An
emergency C-section was performed, but the baby suffered severe brain damage
due to lack of oxygen.
The defendants alleged that they were presented with a
sudden emergency in this case and that they should not be required to meet the
standard of care of a reasonably prudent physician or nurse who had plenty of
time to consider the options.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the “sudden emergency”
doctrine did not apply. It reasoned that
health care providers are trained to identify and treat possible medical
complications and emergencies.
Accordingly, they should be able to make good choices in such instances.
I am a little confused by the case. It would seem to me that the negligence
occurred when the Pitocin was administered without first performing a vaginal
exam as required by hospital policy.
When that mistake occurred, there was no emergency. The emergency circumstances began five hours
later when the prolapsed cord was detected.
From that point, it took 16 minutes to deliver the baby. So, I don’t see why the sudden emergency
doctrine ever came into play.
Nevertheless the court came to the same decision that
I would have reached – the sudden emergency doctrine is not applicable to the
Wiggins case. But there is disturbing
language in the opinion stating that the sudden emergency defense “is not
applicable in medical negligence actions.”
We’ll have to continue to watch our courts for further instruction on
this issue.
Looking back on it, I’m sure the philandering husband
in our case felt he did the best he could when confronted by his “sudden
emergency.” However, like the defendants
in the Wiggins case, it was his conduct before that “emergency” that triggered
his problems. As the old saying goes,
“You stray – you pay.”
