Childs v. Weis
1969 Tex. App. LEXIS 2064, 440 S.W.2d 104 (1969)
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Rule of Law:
A physician-patient relationship is contractual in nature and is not formed when an on-call physician, without ever interacting with the patient, advises an emergency room nurse to have the patient contact their own regular physician.
Facts:
- Daisy Childs, who was approximately seven months pregnant, presented herself to the Greenville Hospital emergency room at 2:00 A.M. with bleeding and labor pains.
- Nurse H. Beckham examined Mrs. Childs and telephoned Dr. C. B. Weis, the physician on emergency call.
- The nurse informed Dr. Weis that a woman was in the emergency room with a 'bloody show' and 'labor pains' and that her regular obstetrician was in another city, Garland.
- Dr. Weis told the nurse to have the patient call her doctor in Garland to see what he wanted her to do.
- Dr. Weis never saw, spoke to, examined, or otherwise agreed to treat Daisy Childs.
- Nurse Beckham relayed to Mrs. Childs that 'the Dr. said that I would have to go to my doctor in Dallas.'
- Approximately one hour after leaving the hospital, Mrs. Childs gave birth in a car while en route to a medical facility in a different town, Sulphur Springs.
- The newborn infant lived for about 12 hours and then died.
Procedural Posture:
- J. C. Childs sued Dr. C. B. Weis, Nurse H. Beckham, and Greenville Hospital Authority in a Texas trial court for negligence.
- Dr. Weis filed a motion for summary judgment, arguing no physician-patient relationship existed as a matter of law.
- The trial court granted Dr. Weis's motion for summary judgment, issuing a take-nothing judgment in his favor.
- The trial court then severed the cause of action against Dr. Weis from the ongoing claims against the nurse and the hospital.
- Childs, as appellant, appealed the summary judgment in favor of Dr. Weis, the appellee, to the Texas Court of Civil Appeals.
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Issue:
Does a physician-patient relationship, and its attendant duty of care, arise when an on-call physician responds to an emergency room nurse's telephone call by instructing the nurse to have the patient contact their own doctor, without ever seeing, speaking to, or expressly agreeing to treat the patient?
Opinions:
Majority - Justice Claude Williams
No. A physician-patient relationship, which is fundamentally contractual and voluntary, does not arise under these circumstances. The court reasoned that a physician is under no legal obligation to render services to anyone who requests them absent a pre-existing contractual relationship, either express or implied. In this case, there was a complete absence of evidence of such a contract; Dr. Weis never saw, spoke to, or agreed to treat Mrs. Childs. His instruction to the nurse to have Mrs. Childs contact her own doctor was not an acceptance of the case or a form of treatment, but rather a reasonable refusal to enter into a physician-patient relationship. Furthermore, Dr. Weis cannot be held vicariously liable for Nurse Beckham's statements because there was no evidence of a principal-agent relationship between them.
Analysis:
This decision reaffirms the traditional common law principle that the physician-patient relationship is consensual and contractual. It clarifies that a physician's on-call status for a hospital does not, by itself, create a duty to treat every patient who presents at the emergency room. The ruling protects physicians from being involuntarily conscripted into a duty of care through indirect communications, requiring affirmative acts of acceptance to establish the relationship. This precedent makes it significantly more difficult for a plaintiff to establish a duty of care against an on-call physician who has declined to treat a patient with whom they had no direct contact or express agreement.
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