This medical malpractice action arises from an iridotomy performed on the plaintiff’s left eye, which resulted in post-operative complications. The Trial Court granted defendant’s motion for partial summary judgment on plaintiff’s informed consent claim, asserting plaintiff’s failure to provide expert medical evidence that the medical community knew of the risk of her specific injury. After
Read More

Sitsofe Awuku v. Shelley Jones-Dillon, M.D. Docket No.A-1366-13T1, decided July 31, 2014 Plaintiff brought this medical malpractice action after suffering complications from treatment of an acute stroke after presenting the ER at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. Plaintiff’s claim against one of the named defendants, who was board certified in internal medicine, was dismissed because
Read More

Further Analysis of Scalfidi Charge in Komlodi v. Picciano, WL 2050758 (N.J. 2014) See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 Here, the Court charged the jury on both the “substantial factor” and “but for” instructions on proximate cause. The “but-for” causation charge was given inadvertently by the Court and was done
Read More

Further Analysis of Scalfidi Charge in Komlodi v. Picciano, WL 2050758 (N.J. 2014) See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 The Trial Court correctly elected to charge the jury on both intervening/superseding causation and general foreseeability. The intervening/superseding causation charge attempts to focus the jury’s attention on the different arguments of the parties.
Read More

Part 4 of the Komlodi v. Picciano, WL 2050758 (N.J. 2014) See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 The Use of the Scafidi Charge In Scafidi v. Seiler, 119 N.J. 93 (1990), a two-part test was created for proving causation in cases where plaintiff’s injuries are, in part, attributable to a pre-existing condition. First, the
Read More