Klaus Roessler timely appeals a summary final judgment entered in favor of Sarasota County Public Hospital d/b/a Sarasota Memorial Hospital (Sarasota Memorial).
On September 19, 1996, Mr. Roessler was examined by a physician at the Sarasota Family Walk-In Clinic. The physician took chest and abdominal x-rays of Mr. Roessler. After viewing the x-rays, the physician diagnosed Mr. Roessler as suffering from a perforated viscus and pneumonia. A perforated viscus is a potentially acute life-threatening condition requiring immediate surgical intervention. The physician immediately made arrangements for Mr. Roessler to go to Sarasota Memorial's emergency room to be seen by a surgeon for evaluation of the perforated viscus and surgery. Mr. Roessler went from the family clinic directly to Sarasota Memorial's emergency room. After being evaluated in the emergency room, Mr. Roessler was admitted to the hospital.
The next day, on September 20, 1996, scans
After Mr. Roessler had been admitted to Sarasota Memorial for six days, an operation was performed on his perforated viscus. Although he survived, Mr. Roessler developed serious complications which required approximately a two and one-half month admission in Sarasota Memorial. During that time, Mr. Roessler developed renal failure, a heart condition, systemic sepsis, and multiple brain abscesses which had to be surgically removed.
Mr. Roessler subsequently filed an action against Sarasota Memorial for medical malpractice based upon vicarious liability as well as for negligent destruction of evidence. The present appeal concerns only the summary judgment entered on Mr. Roessler's claim for medical malpractice. In that claim, Mr. Roessler alleged that Dr. Lichtenstein misinterpreted the scans taken in Sarasota Memorial's radiology department and was negligent in failing to include an abdominal abscess in his differential diagnosis of Mr. Roessler's abdominal scans. He further alleged that Dr. Lichtenstein did so while an agent of Sarasota Memorial, that he did so within the scope of the agency, and that the hospital
In response, Sarasota Memorial asserted in its answer, among other affirmative defenses, that Dr. Lichtenstein was an independent contractor and was not an agent, servant, or employee of Sarasota Memorial. Sarasota Memorial filed a motion for summary judgment which asserted, in relevant part, that it was not liable for the acts of Dr. Lichtenstein because he was not an employee or agent of Sarasota Memorial. The trial court granted Sarasota Memorial's motion for summary judgment and entered a final judgment thereon.
In this appeal, we are asked to determine whether Sarasota Memorial satisfied its burden to establish that no genuine issues of material fact existed regarding its vicarious liability, thereby entitling it to summary judgment as a matter of law. We find that Sarasota Memorial did not satisfy that burden.
As a general rule, a principal may be held liable for the acts of its agent that are within the course and scope of the agency. Jaar v. Univ. of Miami, 474 So.2d 239 (Fla. 3d DCA 1985). Although some agencies are based upon an express agreement, a principal may be liable to a third party for acts of its agent which are within the agent's apparent authority. See Thomas D. Sawaya, Florida Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Actions, § 12.18, at 747 (2003) (discussing agency principles generally and in the context of medical malpractice actions). Apparent authority is authority which a principal knowingly tolerates or permits, or which the principal by its actions or words holds the agent out as possessing. Taco Bell of Cal. v. Zappone, 324 So.2d 121, 123 (Fla. 2d DCA 1975). The rationale for the doctrine of apparent authority is that a principal should be estopped to deny the authority of an agent when the principal permitted an appearance of authority in the agent and, in so doing, justified a third party's reliance upon that appearance of authority as if it were actually conferred upon the agent. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sommers, 472 So.2d 522, 524 (Fla. 1st DCA 1985); see also Irving v. Doctors Hosp. of Lake Worth, Inc., 415 So.2d 55, 59 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982).
An apparent agency exists only if all three of the following elements are present: (a) a representation by the purported principal; (b) a reliance on that representation by a third party; and (c) a change in position by the third party in reliance on the representation.
While some hospitals employ their own staff of physicians, others enter into contractual arrangements with legal entities made up of an association of physicians to provide medical services as independent contractors with the expectation that vicarious liability will not attach to the hospital for the negligent acts of those physicians. See Thomas D. Sawaya, Florida Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Actions, § 12.18, at 751-52 (2003). Indeed, Sarasota Memorial and the professional association of radiologists with which Dr. Lichtenstein was affiliated had entered into such an independent contractor agreement.
Under certain circumstances, however, a hospital may be held vicariously liable for the acts of physicians, even if they are independent contractors, if these physicians act with the apparent authority of the hospital. Cuker v. Hillsborough County Hosp. Auth., 605 So.2d 998, 999 (Fla. 2d DCA 1992). The doctrine of apparent authority has been applied to physicians who rendered care and treatment to individuals treated in hospital emergency rooms, see Orlando Regional Medical Center, Inc. v. Chmielewski, 573 So.2d 876 (Fla. 5th DCA 1990), as well as in hospital departments other than emergency rooms, see Cuker, 605 So.2d 998. The question of a physician's apparent authority to act for a hospital is often a question of fact for the jury. See Cuker, 605 So.2d at 999 (Fla. 2d DCA 1992); Chmielewski, 573 So.2d at 876.
In the present matter, evidence presented to the trial court for the purpose of the summary judgment proceeding demonstrated that Sarasota Memorial maintained a radiology department which was physically located within the hospital's grounds. Sarasota Memorial contracted with SMH Radiology Associates, P.A., for it to be the exclusive provider of professional radiological services at the hospital. Dr. Lichtenstein was an employee of SMH Radiology on the date he interpreted Mr. Roessler's scans. Neither Dr. Lichtenstein nor SMH Radiology had offices outside of Sarasota Memorial's hospital grounds. The radiologists employed by SMH Radiology, including Dr. Lichtenstein, worked at Sarasota Memorial to provide all professional radiological services twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to Sarasota Memorial's inpatients and outpatients.
Mr. Roessler sought the services offered by Sarasota Memorial when he went to Sarasota Memorial's emergency department.
During a trial, other facts might be developed which could negate a conclusion that Sarasota Memorial should be vicariously liable under an apparent agency theory. However, as presented to the trial court the foregoing facts created a jury question concerning whether Sarasota Memorial, through its actions, represented that Dr. Lichtenstein was its apparent agent. Therefore, the entry of the summary judgment was improper.
Reversed and remanded for further proceedings consistent herewith.
NORTHCUTT, J., Concurs.
ALTENBERND, C.J., Concurs with opinion.
ALTENBERND, Chief Judge, Concurring.
I concur because precedent requires me to do so. I believe, however, that our twenty-year experiment with the use of apparent agency as a doctrine to determine a hospital's vicarious liability for the acts of various independent contractors has been a failure. Patients, hospitals, doctors, nurses, other licensed professionals, risk managers for governmental agencies, and insurance companies all need to have predictable general rules establishing the parameters of vicarious liability in this situation. Utilizing case-specific decisions by individually selected juries to determine whether a hospital is or is not vicariously liable for the mistakes of a radiology department, an emergency room, or some other corporate entity that has been created as an independent contractor to provide necessary services within the hospital is inefficient, unpredictable and, perhaps most important, a source of avoidable litigation. Our society can undoubtedly function well and provide insurance coverage to protect the risks of malpractice if there is either broad liability upon the hospital for these services as nondelegable duties or if liability is restricted to the independent contractor. The uncertainty of the current system, however, does not work. The supreme court or the legislature needs to simplify the rules of liability in this area.
As well explained in the majority opinion, in the context of tort law, apparent agency was intended to create vicarious liability for a principal who retains an independent contractor and then represents to the world that the independent contractor is an agent whom the principal has the authority to control. When a specific plaintiff actually relies upon the misrepresentation to his or her detriment, the plaintiff is entitled to recover from the principal for the negligence of the independent contractor. See generally Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Civ.) 3.3(b)(2). To some extent, apparent agency can be viewed as a form of vicarious liability for personal injuries and property damage that is warranted because of false information negligently supplied by the principal for the guidance of others. See generally Fla. Std. Jury
It appears that Florida first utilized apparent agency in the context of medical malpractice in the early 1980s. See Webb v. Priest, 413 So.2d 43 (Fla. 3d DCA 1982); Irving v. Doctor's Hosp. of Lake Worth, 415 So.2d 55 (Fla. 4th DCA 1982). I suspect that the doctrine arose at that time because that is when hospitals first began spinning off their departments into separate corporations. Over the last twenty years, the apparent agency theory has not allowed the law to establish predictable, general rules of liability because a theory that requires a representation by the principal and reliance by the plaintiff is inherently case specific. Thus, after twenty years of precedent, if a hospital were sued by two different patients for two identical acts of malpractice occurring on the same day and committed by the same doctor in the radiology department, the hospital's vicarious liability would be a fact question for resolution by two different juries. Because such liability is based on case-specific representations by the defendant and reliance by the plaintiff, the two juries would be free to decide that the hospital was vicariously liable for one act but not the other.
More than a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes theorized that trial by jury should be a practical way to obtain greater certainty in the law. Juries could take the "featureless generality" of the standards announced in negligence law and create narrower, more precise rules through a "process of specification." Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Common Law 89-90 (1881). That process may have succeeded to some extent in other areas of tort law, but it has failed in the area of vicarious liability for the acts of medical professionals.
Two recent cases, which are admittedly distinguishable from today's case, seem to favor a theory of nondelegable duty over that of apparent agency in the context of medical negligence. See Shands Teaching Hosp. & Clinic, Inc. v. Juliana, 28 Fla. L. Weekly D2027, ___ So.2d ____, 2003 WL 22023474 (Fla. 1st DCA Aug.29, 2003); Carlisle v. Carnival Corp., 28 Fla. L. Weekly D1991, ___ So.2d ____, 2003 WL 22014591 (Fla. 3d DCA Aug.27, 2003). This trend suggests that hospitals should be vicariously liable as a general rule for activities within the hospital where the patient cannot and does not realistically have the ability to shop on the open market for another provider.
Comment
User Comments