Sloan v. Providence Health System-Oregon

If the jury instructions correctly state the law, a trial court may commit a reversible error by refusing to allow those instructions to be submitted to the jury.

Plaintiff alleged that his father's death was cause by defendants Providence Health System-Oregon (Providence) and Apogee Medical Group, P.C. (Apogee). Plaintiff appealed because the jury did not find Apogee’s negligence to be the cause of death. On appeal, plaintiff claimed that the trial court failed to give to plaintiff’s requested jury instructions to the jury. Without the instruction, plaintiff claims that the jury may have misunderstood the law on causation. The court reasoned that since negligence is a “cause in fact” of the injury and the injury needs to be reasonably foreseeable as a result of the defendant’s negligence, the instructions correctly stated the law and should have been submitted to the jury. Further, there was evidence of a causal connection between the death and injury. Therefore the instructions should have been submitted to the jury. Reversed and Remand.