Attorneys John Witten and Mary O’Connell obtained an order from the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirming a $153,000 judgment on behalf of a client who was injured by a general surgeon’s failure to remove a cancerous thyroid tumor. On appeal, the physician argued that three of the four factual contentions of negligence submitted in a jury instruction were unsupported by sufficient evidence. Significantly, the physician neither objected to the use of a general verdict nor requested a special verdict.
In its published opinion, the Court definitively established the existence of a waiver rule in the Tenth Circuit. In particular, the Court held that where an appellant fails to request a special verdict, it waives any claim of error based on a claim that one or more, but not all, factual contentions are unsupported by the evidence.
For more information, and to read the opinion, the link is below: