4421- Kadlec Medical Center v. Lakeview
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Kadlec Medical Center v. Lakeview Anesthesia Associates
527 F.3d 412 (5th Cir. 2008)
REAVLEY, Circuit Judge:
Kadlec Medical Center and its insurer, Western Professional Insurance Company, filed this diversity action in Louisiana district court against Louisiana Anesthesia Associates (LAA), its shareholders, and Lakeview Regional Medical Center (Lakeview Medical). The LAA shareholders worked with Dr. Robert Berry—an anesthesiologist and former LAA shareholder—at Lakeview Medical, where the defendants discovered his on-duty use of narcotics. In referral letters written by the defendants and relied on by Kadlec, his future employer, the defendants did not disclose Dr. Berry’s drug use.
While under the influence of Demerol at Kadlec, Dr. Berry’s negligent performance led to the near-death of a patient, resulting in a lawsuit against Kadlec. Plaintiffs claim here that the defendants’ misleading referral letters were a legal cause of plaintiffs’ financial injury, i.e., having to pay over $8 million to defend and settle the lawsuit. The jury found in favor of the plaintiffs and judgment followed. We reverse the judgment against Lakeview Medical, vacate the remainder of the judgment, and remand.
I. Factual Background
Dr. Berry was a licensed anesthesiologist in Louisiana and practiced with Drs. William Preau, Mark Dennis, David Baldone, and Allan Parr at LAA. From November 2000 until his termination on March 13, 2001, Dr. Berry was a shareholder of LAA, the exclusive provider of anesthesia services to Lakeview Medical (a Louisiana hospital).
In November 2000, a small management team at Lakeview Medical investigated Dr. Berry after nurses expressed concern about his undocumented and suspicious withdrawals of Demerol. [The findings were discussed with Dr. Berry’s LAA partners, who confronted him with the evidence, but his drug-related problems continued and his performance deteriorated. In March of 2001, Lakeview’s CEO Max Lauderdale]…decided that it was in the best interest of patient safety that Dr. Berry not practice at the hospital. Dr. Dennis and his three partners at LAA fired Dr. Berry and signed his termination letter on March 27, 2001, which explained that he was fired “for cause”:
[You have been fired for cause because] you have reported to work in an impaired physical, mental, and emotional state. Your impaired condition has prevented you from properly performing your duties and puts our patients at significant risk…. [P]lease consider your termination effective March 13, 2001.
At Lakeview Medical, Lauderdale ordered the Chief Nursing Officer to notify the administration if Dr. Berry returned.
Despite recognizing Dr. Berry’s drug problem and the danger he posed to patients, neither Dr. Dennis nor Lauderdale reported Dr. Berry’s impairment [or discipline] to the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee,…to Lakeview Medical’s Board of Trustees,…to the Louisiana Board of Medical Examiners or to the National Practitioner’s Data Bank….
After leaving LAA and Lakeview Medical, Dr. Berry briefly obtained work as a locum tenens (traveling physician) at a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. In October 2001, he applied through Staff Care, a leading locum tenens staffing firm, for locum tenens privileges at Kadlec Medical Center in Washington State. After receiving his application, Kadlec began its credentialing process. Kadlec examined a variety of materials, including referral letters from LAA and Lakeview Medical.
LAA’s Dr. Preau and Dr. Dennis, two months after firing Dr. Berry for his on-the-job drug use, submitted referral letters for Dr. Berry to Staff Care, with the intention that they be provided to future employers. The letter from Dr. Dennis stated that he had worked with Dr. Berry for four years, that he was an excellent clinician, and that he would be an asset to any anesthesia service.
Dr. Berry for his on-the-job drug use, submitted referral letters for Dr. Berry to Staff Care, with the intention that they be provided to future employers. The letter from Dr. Dennis stated that he had worked with Dr. Berry for four years, that he was an excellent clinician, and that he would be an asset to any anesthesia service. Dr. Preau’s letter said that he worked with Berry at Lakeview Medical and that he recommended him highly as an anesthesiologist. Dr. Preau’s and Dr. Dennis’s letters were submitted on June 3, 2001, only sixty-eight days after they fired him for using narcotics while on-duty and stating in his termination letter that Dr. Berry’s behavior put “patients at significant risk.”
On October 17, 2001, Kadlec sent Lakeview Medical a request for credentialing information about Berry. The request included a detailed confidential questionnaire, a delineation of privileges, and a signed consent for release of information. The interrogatories on the questionnaire asked whether “[Dr. Berry] has been subject to any disciplinary action,” if “[Dr. Berry has] the ability (health status) to perform the privileges requested,” whether “[Dr. Berry has] shown any signs of behavior/personality problems or impairments,” and whether Dr. Berry has satisfactory “judgement” [sic].
Nine days later, Lakeview Medical responded to the requests for credentialing information about fourteen different physicians. In thirteen cases, it responded fully and completely to the request, filling out forms with all the information asked for by the requesting health care provider. The fourteenth request, from Kadlec concerning Berry, was handled differently. Instead of completing the multi-part forms, Lakeview Medical staff drafted a short letter. In its entirety, it read:
This letter is written in response to your inquiry regarding [Dr. Berry]. Due to the large volume of inquiries received in this office, the following information is provided.
Our records indicate that Dr. Robert L. Berry was on the Active Medical Staff of Lakeview Regional Medical Center in the field of Anesthesiology from March 04, 1997 through September 04, 2001.
If I can be of further assistance, you may contact me at (504) 867-4076.
The letter did not disclose LAA’s termination of Dr. Berry; his on-duty drug use; the investigation into Dr. Berry’s undocumented and suspicious withdrawals of Demerol that “violated the standard of care”; or any other negative information. The employee who drafted the letter said at trial that she just followed a form letter, which is one of many that Lakeview Medical used.
Kadlec then credentialed Dr. Berry, and he began working there. After working at Kadlec without incident for a number of months, [Dr. Berry’s performance began to deteriorate again in November, 2002. He seemed sick on occasion and exhibited mood swings. On November 12 he again appeared sick, several of his surgery patients suffered adverse effects, and he almost passed out during one procedure.]…
Kimberley Jones was Dr. Berry’s fifth patient that morning. She was in for what should have been a routine, fifteen minute tubal ligation. When they moved her into the recovery room, one nurse noticed that her fingernails were blue, and she was not breathing. Dr. Berry failed to resuscitate her, and she is now in a permanent vegetative state.
…
Jones’s family sued Dr. Berry and Kadlec in Washington. Dr. Berry’s insurer settled the claim against him…. Western, Kadlec’s insurer, settled the claim against Kadlec. [Western’s payout was approximately $8.25 million.]
…
III. Discussion
A. The Intentional and Negligent Misrepresentation Claims
The plaintiffs allege that the defendants committed two torts: intentional misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation. The elements of a claim for intentional misrepresentation in Louisiana are: (1) a misrepresentation of a material fact; (2) made with intent to deceive; and (3) causing justifiable reliance with resultant injury. To establish a claim for intentional misrepresentation when it is by silence or inaction, plaintiffs also must show that the defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff to disclose the information. To make out a negligentmisrepresentation claim in Louisiana: (1) there must be a legal duty on the part of the defendant to supply correct information; (2) there must be a breach of that duty, which can occur by omission as well as by affirmative misrepresentation; and (3) the breach must have caused damages to the plaintiff based on the plaintiff’s reasonable reliance on the misrepresentation.
The defendants argue that any representations in, or omissions from, the referral letters cannot establish liability. We begin our analysis below by holding that after choosing to write referral letters, the defendants assumed a duty not to make affirmative misrepresentations in the letters. We next analyze whether the letters were misleading, and we conclude that the LAA defendants’ letters were misleading, but the letter from Lakeview Medical was not. We also examine whether the defendants had an affirmative duty to disclose negative information about Dr. Berry in their referral letters, and we conclude that there was not an affirmative duty to disclose. Based on these holdings, Lakeview Medical did not breach any duty owed to Kadlec, and therefore the judgment against it is reversed. Finally, we examine other challenges to the LAA defendants’ liability, and we conclude that they are without merit.
1. The Affirmative Misrepresentations
The defendants owed a duty to Kadlec to avoid affirmative misrepresentations in the referral letters. In Louisiana, “[a]lthough a party may keep absolute silence and violate no rule of law or equity…if he volunteers to speak and to convey information which may influence the conduct of the other party, he is bound to [disclose] the whole truth.” In negligent misrepresentation cases, Louisiana courts have held that even when there is no initial duty to disclose information, “once [a party] volunteer[s] information, it assume[s] a duty to insure that the information volunteered [is] correct.”
Consistent with these cases, the defendants had a legal duty not to make affirmative misrepresentations in their referral letters…. Here, defendants were recommending an anesthesiologist, who held the lives of patients in his hands every day. Policy considerations dictate that the defendants had a duty to avoid misrepresentations in their referral letters if they misled plaintiffs into thinking that Dr. Berry was an “excellent” anesthesiologist, when they had information that he was a drug addict. Indeed, if defendants’ statements created a misapprehension about Dr. Berry’s suitability to work as an anesthesiologist, then by “volunteer[ing] to speak and to convey information which…influence[d] the conduct of [Kadlec], [they were] bound to [disclose] the whole truth.” In other words, if they created a misapprehension about Dr. Berry due to their own statements, they incurred a duty to disclose information about his drug use and for-cause firing to complete the whole picture.
…The letter from Dr. Preau stated that Dr. Berry was an “excellent anesthesiologist” and that he “recommend[ed] him highly.” Dr. Dennis’s letter said that Dr. Berry was “an excellent physician” who “he is sure will be an asset to [his future employer’s] anesthesia service.” These letters are false on their face and
materially misleading….
The question as to whether Lakeview Medical’s letter was misleading is more difficult. The letter does not comment on Dr. Berry’s proficiency as an anesthesiologist, and it does not recommend him to Kadlec…. [W]hatever the real reason that Lakeview Medical did not respond in full to Kadlec’s inquiry, Kadlec did not present evidence that this could have affirmatively misled it into thinking that Dr. Berry had an uncheckered history at Lakeview Medical.
Kadlec also says that the letter was misleading because it erroneously reported that Dr. Berry was on Lakeview Medical’s active medical staff until September 4, 2001. [The court finds that although Dr. Berry did not return to work at Lakeview after his March 13 termination, technically he was on the medical staff until he formally resigned on October 1.]
In sum, we hold that the letters from the LAA defendants were affirmatively misleading, but the letter from Lakeview Medical was not…. We now examine the theory that, even assuming that there were no misleading statements in the referral letters, the defendants had an affirmative duty to disclose….
[The court proceeds to analyze this issue and concludes, despite “compelling policy arguments,” that Louisiana courts would not impose on the defendants an affirmative duty to disclose possible impairments. Such a duty would exist, according to the court’s reading of Louisiana law, only if there were a “special relationship” between the parties. That relationship apparently would need to be contractual or fiduciary in nature.]
3. Legal Cause
…
The LAA defendants…argue that Kadlec had multiple warning signs…and had it responded with an investigation, plaintiffs’ injuries would have been avoided…. The jury…concluded that the LAA defendants negligently and intentionally misled Kadlec about Dr. Berry’s drug addiction. By intentionally covering up Dr. Berry’s drug addiction in communications with a future employer, they should have foreseen that the future employer might miss the warning signs of Dr. Berry’s addiction. This was within the scope of the risk they took.
Indeed, both plaintiffs’ and defendants’ witnesses agreed at trial that narcotics addiction is a disease, that addicts try to hide their disease from their co-workers, and that particularly in the case of narcotics-addicted anesthesiologists, for whom livelihood and drug supply are in the same place, colleagues may be the last to know about their addiction and impairment. This is not a case where a future tortious act is so unforeseeable that it should relieve the earlier tortfeasor of liability….
…
E. Summary and Remand Instructions
…
The district court entered judgment consistent with how the jury allocated fault among the entities it found to be legally responsible for the plaintiffs’ injuries. The jury’s allocation was as follows: Dr. Dennis 20%; Dr. Preau 5%; Lakeview Medical 25%; Kadlec 17%; and Dr. Berry 33%. We have affirmed the liability finding of the jury against the LAA defendants. But now that we have reversed the judgment against Lakeview Medical, the question arises whether there must be a reapportionment of fault with a corresponding change to damages assessed against the LAA defendants. It is possible that this is unnecessary, if under Louisiana law we can simply compare the fault percentages of the remaining parties. But Louisiana law might also require a reapportionment of fault and, therefore, a fresh determination of damages. Because there was no briefing on this issue, we vacate the judgment against the LAA defendants and remand the case to the district court to determine what, if anything, needs to be redone on the apportionment and damages issues, and then to enter judgment against the LAA defendants accordingly.
QUESTION:
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is located in New Orleans. Most, if not all, of its judges are likely members of the Louisiana bar. Nevertheless, this federal court is presuming to gauge what a state court would decide if presented with these issues. What procedural mechanism might the district court or court of appeals have used to dispose of the Kadlec case without guessing what the Louisiana courts would do?
Kadlec Medical Center v. Lakeview Anesthesia Associates
527 F.3d 412 (5th Cir. 2008)
REAVLEY, Circuit Judge:
Kadlec Medical Center and its insurer, Western Professional Insurance Company, filed this diversity action in Louisiana district court against Louisiana Anesthesia Associates (LAA), its shareholders, and Lakeview Regional Medical Center (Lakeview Medical). The LAA shareholders worked with Dr. Robert Berry—an anesthesiologist and former LAA shareholder—at Lakeview Medical, where the defendants discovered his on-duty use of narcotics. In referral letters written by the defendants and relied on by Kadlec, his future employer, the defendants did not disclose Dr. Berry’s drug use.
While under the influence of Demerol at Kadlec, Dr. Berry’s negligent performance led to the near-death of a patient, resulting in a lawsuit against Kadlec. Plaintiffs claim here that the defendants’ misleading referral letters were a legal cause of plaintiffs’ financial injury, i.e., having to pay over $8 million to defend and settle the lawsuit. The jury found in favor of the plaintiffs and judgment followed. We reverse the judgment against Lakeview Medical, vacate the remainder of the judgment, and remand.
I. Factual Background
Dr. Berry was a licensed anesthesiologist in Louisiana and practiced with Drs. William Preau, Mark Dennis, David Baldone, and Allan Parr at LAA. From November 2000 until his termination on March 13, 2001, Dr. Berry was a shareholder of LAA, the exclusive provider of anesthesia services to Lakeview Medical (a Louisiana hospital).
In November 2000, a small management team at Lakeview Medical investigated Dr. Berry after nurses expressed concern about his undocumented and suspicious withdrawals of Demerol. [The findings were discussed with Dr. Berry’s LAA partners, who confronted him with the evidence, but his drug-related problems continued and his performance deteriorated. In March of 2001, Lakeview’s CEO Max Lauderdale]…decided that it was in the best interest of patient safety that Dr. Berry not practice at the hospital. Dr. Dennis and his three partners at LAA fired Dr. Berry and signed his termination letter on March 27, 2001, which explained that he was fired “for cause”:
[You have been fired for cause because] you have reported to work in an impaired physical, mental, and emotional state. Your impaired condition has prevented you from properly performing your duties and puts our patients at significant risk…. [P]lease consider your termination effective March 13, 2001.
At Lakeview Medical, Lauderdale ordered the Chief Nursing Officer to notify the administration if Dr. Berry returned.
Despite recognizing Dr. Berry’s drug problem and the danger he posed to patients, neither Dr. Dennis nor Lauderdale reported Dr. Berry’s impairment [or discipline] to the hospital’s Medical Executive Committee,…to Lakeview Medical’s Board of Trustees,…to the Louisiana Board of Medical Examiners or to the National Practitioner’s Data Bank….
After leaving LAA and Lakeview Medical, Dr. Berry briefly obtained work as a locum tenens (traveling physician) at a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. In October 2001, he applied through Staff Care, a leading locum tenens staffing firm, for locum tenens privileges at Kadlec Medical Center in Washington State. After receiving his application, Kadlec began its credentialing process. Kadlec examined a variety of materials, including referral letters from LAA and Lakeview Medical.
LAA’s Dr. Preau and Dr. Dennis, two months after firing Dr. Berry for his on-the-job drug use, submitted referral letters for Dr. Berry to Staff Care, with the intention that they be provided to future employers. The letter from Dr. Dennis stated that he had worked with Dr. Berry for four years, that he was an excellent clinician, and that he would be an asset to any anesthesia service.
Dr. Berry for his on-the-job drug use, submitted referral letters for Dr. Berry to Staff Care, with the intention that they be provided to future employers. The letter from Dr. Dennis stated that he had worked with Dr. Berry for four years, that he was an excellent clinician, and that he would be an asset to any anesthesia service. Dr. Preau’s letter said that he worked with Berry at Lakeview Medical and that he recommended him highly as an anesthesiologist. Dr. Preau’s and Dr. Dennis’s letters were submitted on June 3, 2001, only sixty-eight days after they fired him for using narcotics while on-duty and stating in his termination letter that Dr. Berry’s behavior put “patients at significant risk.”
On October 17, 2001, Kadlec sent Lakeview Medical a request for credentialing information about Berry. The request included a detailed confidential questionnaire, a delineation of privileges, and a signed consent for release of information. The interrogatories on the questionnaire asked whether “[Dr. Berry] has been subject to any disciplinary action,” if “[Dr. Berry has] the ability (health status) to perform the privileges requested,” whether “[Dr. Berry has] shown any signs of behavior/personality problems or impairments,” and whether Dr. Berry has satisfactory “judgement” [sic].
Nine days later, Lakeview Medical responded to the requests for credentialing information about fourteen different physicians. In thirteen cases, it responded fully and completely to the request, filling out forms with all the information asked for by the requesting health care provider. The fourteenth request, from Kadlec concerning Berry, was handled differently. Instead of completing the multi-part forms, Lakeview Medical staff drafted a short letter. In its entirety, it read:
This letter is written in response to your inquiry regarding [Dr. Berry]. Due to the large volume of inquiries received in this office, the following information is provided.
Our records indicate that Dr. Robert L. Berry was on the Active Medical Staff of Lakeview Regional Medical Center in the field of Anesthesiology from March 04, 1997 through September 04, 2001.
If I can be of further assistance, you may contact me at (504) 867-4076.
The letter did not disclose LAA’s termination of Dr. Berry; his on-duty drug use; the investigation into Dr. Berry’s undocumented and suspicious withdrawals of Demerol that “violated the standard of care”; or any other negative information. The employee who drafted the letter said at trial that she just followed a form letter, which is one of many that Lakeview Medical used.
Kadlec then credentialed Dr. Berry, and he began working there. After working at Kadlec without incident for a number of months, [Dr. Berry’s performance began to deteriorate again in November, 2002. He seemed sick on occasion and exhibited mood swings. On November 12 he again appeared sick, several of his surgery patients suffered adverse effects, and he almost passed out during one procedure.]…
Kimberley Jones was Dr. Berry’s fifth patient that morning. She was in for what should have been a routine, fifteen minute tubal ligation. When they moved her into the recovery room, one nurse noticed that her fingernails were blue, and she was not breathing. Dr. Berry failed to resuscitate her, and she is now in a permanent vegetative state.
…
Jones’s family sued Dr. Berry and Kadlec in Washington. Dr. Berry’s insurer settled the claim against him…. Western, Kadlec’s insurer, settled the claim against Kadlec. [Western’s payout was approximately $8.25 million.]
…
III. Discussion
A. The Intentional and Negligent Misrepresentation Claims
The plaintiffs allege that the defendants committed two torts: intentional misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation. The elements of a claim for intentional misrepresentation in Louisiana are: (1) a misrepresentation of a material fact; (2) made with intent to deceive; and (3) causing justifiable reliance with resultant injury. To establish a claim for intentional misrepresentation when it is by silence or inaction, plaintiffs also must show that the defendant owed a duty to the plaintiff to disclose the information. To make out a negligentmisrepresentation claim in Louisiana: (1) there must be a legal duty on the part of the defendant to supply correct information; (2) there must be a breach of that duty, which can occur by omission as well as by affirmative misrepresentation; and (3) the breach must have caused damages to the plaintiff based on the plaintiff’s reasonable reliance on the misrepresentation.
The defendants argue that any representations in, or omissions from, the referral letters cannot establish liability. We begin our analysis below by holding that after choosing to write referral letters, the defendants assumed a duty not to make affirmative misrepresentations in the letters. We next analyze whether the letters were misleading, and we conclude that the LAA defendants’ letters were misleading, but the letter from Lakeview Medical was not. We also examine whether the defendants had an affirmative duty to disclose negative information about Dr. Berry in their referral letters, and we conclude that there was not an affirmative duty to disclose. Based on these holdings, Lakeview Medical did not breach any duty owed to Kadlec, and therefore the judgment against it is reversed. Finally, we examine other challenges to the LAA defendants’ liability, and we conclude that they are without merit.
1. The Affirmative Misrepresentations
The defendants owed a duty to Kadlec to avoid affirmative misrepresentations in the referral letters. In Louisiana, “[a]lthough a party may keep absolute silence and violate no rule of law or equity…if he volunteers to speak and to convey information which may influence the conduct of the other party, he is bound to [disclose] the whole truth.” In negligent misrepresentation cases, Louisiana courts have held that even when there is no initial duty to disclose information, “once [a party] volunteer[s] information, it assume[s] a duty to insure that the information volunteered [is] correct.”
Consistent with these cases, the defendants had a legal duty not to make affirmative misrepresentations in their referral letters…. Here, defendants were recommending an anesthesiologist, who held the lives of patients in his hands every day. Policy considerations dictate that the defendants had a duty to avoid misrepresentations in their referral letters if they misled plaintiffs into thinking that Dr. Berry was an “excellent” anesthesiologist, when they had information that he was a drug addict. Indeed, if defendants’ statements created a misapprehension about Dr. Berry’s suitability to work as an anesthesiologist, then by “volunteer[ing] to speak and to convey information which…influence[d] the conduct of [Kadlec], [they were] bound to [disclose] the whole truth.” In other words, if they created a misapprehension about Dr. Berry due to their own statements, they incurred a duty to disclose information about his drug use and for-cause firing to complete the whole picture.
…The letter from Dr. Preau stated that Dr. Berry was an “excellent anesthesiologist” and that he “recommend[ed] him highly.” Dr. Dennis’s letter said that Dr. Berry was “an excellent physician” who “he is sure will be an asset to [his future employer’s] anesthesia service.” These letters are false on their face and
materially misleading….
The question as to whether Lakeview Medical’s letter was misleading is more difficult. The letter does not comment on Dr. Berry’s proficiency as an anesthesiologist, and it does not recommend him to Kadlec…. [W]hatever the real reason that Lakeview Medical did not respond in full to Kadlec’s inquiry, Kadlec did not present evidence that this could have affirmatively misled it into thinking that Dr. Berry had an uncheckered history at Lakeview Medical.
Kadlec also says that the letter was misleading because it erroneously reported that Dr. Berry was on Lakeview Medical’s active medical staff until September 4, 2001. [The court finds that although Dr. Berry did not return to work at Lakeview after his March 13 termination, technically he was on the medical staff until he formally resigned on October 1.]
In sum, we hold that the letters from the LAA defendants were affirmatively misleading, but the letter from Lakeview Medical was not…. We now examine the theory that, even assuming that there were no misleading statements in the referral letters, the defendants had an affirmative duty to disclose….
[The court proceeds to analyze this issue and concludes, despite “compelling policy arguments,” that Louisiana courts would not impose on the defendants an affirmative duty to disclose possible impairments. Such a duty would exist, according to the court’s reading of Louisiana law, only if there were a “special relationship” between the parties. That relationship apparently would need to be contractual or fiduciary in nature.]
3. Legal Cause
…
The LAA defendants…argue that Kadlec had multiple warning signs…and had it responded with an investigation, plaintiffs’ injuries would have been avoided…. The jury…concluded that the LAA defendants negligently and intentionally misled Kadlec about Dr. Berry’s drug addiction. By intentionally covering up Dr. Berry’s drug addiction in communications with a future employer, they should have foreseen that the future employer might miss the warning signs of Dr. Berry’s addiction. This was within the scope of the risk they took.
Indeed, both plaintiffs’ and defendants’ witnesses agreed at trial that narcotics addiction is a disease, that addicts try to hide their disease from their co-workers, and that particularly in the case of narcotics-addicted anesthesiologists, for whom livelihood and drug supply are in the same place, colleagues may be the last to know about their addiction and impairment. This is not a case where a future tortious act is so unforeseeable that it should relieve the earlier tortfeasor of liability….
…
E. Summary and Remand Instructions
…
The district court entered judgment consistent with how the jury allocated fault among the entities it found to be legally responsible for the plaintiffs’ injuries. The jury’s allocation was as follows: Dr. Dennis 20%; Dr. Preau 5%; Lakeview Medical 25%; Kadlec 17%; and Dr. Berry 33%. We have affirmed the liability finding of the jury against the LAA defendants. But now that we have reversed the judgment against Lakeview Medical, the question arises whether there must be a reapportionment of fault with a corresponding change to damages assessed against the LAA defendants. It is possible that this is unnecessary, if under Louisiana law we can simply compare the fault percentages of the remaining parties. But Louisiana law might also require a reapportionment of fault and, therefore, a fresh determination of damages. Because there was no briefing on this issue, we vacate the judgment against the LAA defendants and remand the case to the district court to determine what, if anything, needs to be redone on the apportionment and damages issues, and then to enter judgment against the LAA defendants accordingly.
QUESTION:
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is located in New Orleans. Most, if not all, of its judges are likely members of the Louisiana bar. Nevertheless, this federal court is presuming to gauge what a state court would decide if presented with these issues. What procedural mechanism might the district court or court of appeals have used to dispose of the Kadlec case without guessing what the Louisiana courts would do?
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