The Presumption of the Faults and Causation in Medical Negligence Litigations using the Standards of Comparison

의료과오소송에 있어서 과실과 인과관계의 인정에 관하여 - 경험칙을 중심으로 -

To succeed the claim of medical negligence, the plaintiff should establish the medical profession's fault, and the causation between the fault and damages. The faults are judged on lege artis, which is based on expert witness. However, judges often infer the faults and causations from circumstantial evidences and patients' injuries. This presumptions depend on the law of nature(Erfahrungsgesetz). The law of nature can explain the typical development of the event. If the circumstantial evidences were in accordance with that, the faults and causations would be able to be recognized by the judges. Therefore the standards of comparison such as lege artis or the law of nature play an important role for medical negligence liabilities to be imputed to doctors or hospitals. The factual elements necessary to assume the fault is similar to those of the causation, for the concept of the fault is correlated with that of the causation. The elements include the temporal and spatial proximity between damages and defendant's medical treatments, no existence of other causations, the probability of bed results developed by the medical treatments, and so on. These enable the fault and causation to be assumed at the same times.