Caseflicks

Supreme Court of New Hampshire • 1929

Hawkins v. McGee

146 A. 641 | 84 N.H. 114

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, a doctor’s specific guarantee can create a contract, and damages for breaking it measure the value of the promised result against the result delivered.

Background

Hawkins had a badly scarred hand from an earlier burn. Dr. McGee proposed an operation that would replace scar tissue on the hand with skin from Hawkins’s chest. Hawkins testified that McGee guaranteed a “hundred per cent perfect” hand, but the operation did not produce one.

A jury found for Hawkins after being instructed to consider his pain and suffering and any worsening of his hand. The trial court set aside the verdict as excessive above $500. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial because the jury had received the wrong damages instruction.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the doctor’s statements could amount to an enforceable promise of a perfect hand.

Holding

Yes. A jury could find that the alleged guarantee was a contractual promise, though the doctor’s estimates about recovery time were not.

Reasoning

A statement about how long treatment or recovery will probably take is a prediction, not a contractual commitment. The alleged guarantee of a “hundred per cent perfect” hand, by contrast, could be understood as a promise about the operation’s result.

Surgical outcomes are uncertain, but the jury could still take the guarantee at face value. There was evidence that McGee repeatedly sought permission to operate, supporting an inference that he used the guarantee to obtain Hawkins’s consent.

The doctor’s unspoken reservations would not defeat a promise reasonably understood and relied on by Hawkins. The question was properly left to the jury.

Issue #2

How should damages be measured for breach of a promise to produce a perfect hand?

Holding

By the difference between the value to Hawkins of the promised hand and the value of the hand he actually had after surgery, plus any foreseeable incidental losses.

Reasoning

Contract damages aim to put the injured party in the position he would have occupied had the promise been kept. The relevant comparison is therefore the promised result against the actual result, not simply Hawkins’s condition before and after surgery.

Pain necessarily involved in the operation was part of what Hawkins agreed to undergo in exchange for the promised hand. It was not a separate measure of damages for breach of that promise.

Any worsening of the hand belongs in the comparison between the promised and actual hands, rather than in a separate damages category. Hawkins could also recover for a failure to deliver the promised improvement even if the operation had not made his hand worse. Because the jury was instructed otherwise, a new trial was required.