Doctor’s liability

Omitted cancer diagnosis: the Cassation reiterates the requirements for this to constitute doctor’s liability.

Following a recent case of failure to diagnose cancer, which was followed by the patient’s death, the Court of Cassation reiterated the principles in relation to the causal link in matters of civil liability: (i) the causal link exists only when one event would not have occurred in the absence of the other; (ii) the assessment of causality between the two events must be completed following the rule of “more likely than not”; (iii) the omission is causal with respect to the harmful event, when this would not have occurred if the agent had taken the positive conduct; (iv) the causal link exists even if the omission only anticipated the death that would have occurred anyway (Civil Cassation, ruling 27 March 2019, no. 8461).