| Venue: | NM SC |
| Facts: | Alberts winds up having a baloney amputation. This might or might not have been prevented, had the physicians involved taken more prompt action. |
| Posture: | Partial summary judgment (?) for defendants for failure to establish a causal connection. |
| Issue: | Should NM recognize a cause of action for "lost chance" as a result of physician negligence? |
| Holding: | Yes, but this ain't it. |
| Rule: | Damages should be proportionate to the percentage value of the patient's chance for a better outcome prior to the negligence. No need to limit lost-chance claims to cases where the chance is utterly lost, either. |
| Reasoning: | This isn't speculative, in the sense that there is real physical harm. What we are considering is whether there is a window of time when the harm could have been lessened or avoided. That's totally reasonable, but in this case, there's no evidence that such a window existed. So we have negligence, but no way to conclude that the harm would have been less, had the physicians acted non-negligently. |
| Dicta: | |