New York Appellate Division, Second Department Denies Defendant’s Motion To Recover Damages Based Upon Lack of Informed Consent

In Wilson-Toby v. Bushkin, a New York Medical Malpractice case, our partner Rhonda Kay, obtained an affirmance of the lower Court’s denial of defendants’ motion for summary judgment dismissing the second cause of action to recover damages based upon lack of informed consent. The plaintiff underwent elective cosmetic breast surgery performed by the defendant doctors. The plaintiff alleged that the defendants performed the surgery improperly, causing disfigurement and significant scarring. The complaint alleged causes of action seeking to recover damages for medical malpractice and lack of informed consent. The defendants moved for summary judgment dismissing the complaint, and the Supreme Court denied their motion in its entirety. On appeal, the defendants challenged only the denial of that branch of their motion which was for summary judgment dismissing the cause of action sounding in lack of informed consent. The Court held;

“Contrary to the defendants’ contention, the consent forms signed by the plaintiff “do not establish, as a matter of law, that the scarring that the plaintiff actually experienced as a result of the procedure was, in its nature and in its extent, consistent with the type of scarring that, prior to the procedure, the plaintiff had been told to consider as being among the reasonably forseeable risks of the proposed procedure, or that a reasonable, fully informed person in the plaintiff’s position would have undergone the procedure despite the existence of such risk” (Colon v Klindt, 302 AD2d 551, 553 [internal quotation marks omitted]; see Rezvani v Somnay, 65 AD3d 537, 538-539). Nor did the defendants establish the content of additional disclosures made beyond those contained in the consent forms. The deposition testimony raises a factual dispute between the plaintiff and the defendants as to the content of additional warnings and information they may have given the plaintiff prior to surgery. The existence of triable issues of fact in the defendants’ moving papers precludes a finding that they established their prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law sufficient to eliminate any material issues of fact (see Brown v Outback Steakhouse, 39 AD3d 450, 451; Gray v South Nassau Communities Hosp., 245 AD2d 337; Muscatello v City of New York, 215 AD2d 463, 464).”