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On June 18th, the Court of Appeals in Doreika v. Blotner, once again expanded informed consent obligations under Georgia law. In Doreika, the patient alleged in a malpractice lawsuit that chiropractor Gregg Blotner failed to inform him about the risks of neck adjustments or treatment alternatives for his neck before performing a neck adjustment which either caused a herniated disc or aggravated a pre-existing disc condition.
At trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Blotner. On appeal, the court found that the doctrine of informed consent applied to chiropractors. Never before had a court applied the doctrine of informed consent in a malpractice case to chiropractors.
Informed consent in Georgia was purely statutory until the Georgia Court of Appeals, in its 2000 decision, Ketchup v. Howard, adopted the common law, or case based, doctrine of informed consent for the first time. O.C.G.A. §31-9-6.1 requires that certain information be disclosed by physicians to their patients prior to the performance of certain specified surgical or diagnostic procedures. In 2000, the Court in Ketchup expanded the doctrine of informed consent as requiring “disclosure of the material risks generally recognized and accepted by reasonably prudent physicians which, if disclosed to a reasonably prudent person in the patient’s position, could reasonably be expected to cause that person to decline the proposed treatment or procedure because of the risk of injury that could result.” 543 S.E. 2d 371.
The court’s opinion in Doreika further expands the common law doctrine of informed consent by finding that a chiropractor is a “medical professional” and that performing a neck adjustment is a “treatment or procedure.” Only time will tell as to whether Georgia courts will expand this malpractice lawsuit doctrine to other “medical professionals” and “treatments or procedures.”
