beta
Text
All appeals by the Defendants against Plaintiffs C, D, E, F, and G shall be dismissed.
The judgment below
The Defendants against Plaintiff A and B.
Reasons
The grounds of appeal are examined.
1. Regarding the plaintiffs' grounds of appeal
A. Medical practice is an area requiring highly specialized knowledge, and it is very difficult for a general person, not an expert, to clarify whether he/she has violated the duty of care in the course of medical practice, or whether there exists causation between the violation of the duty of care and the occurrence of losses. Therefore, in cases where symptoms causing severe results occur to a patient after an operation or a surgery, it is also possible to presume that such symptoms are due to medical negligence by proving indirect facts that it is difficult to deem that there are other causes than medical negligence. However, even in such a case, it is not allowed to prove the causal relationship between the doctor's negligence and the result by presumption of the causal relationship with the doctor's negligence on the grounds that there is no probability to presume the occurrence of a result by a doctor's negligence, even if it is difficult for the doctor to bear the burden of proof without negligence.
(See Supreme Court Decision 2002Da45185 Decided October 28, 2004, and Supreme Court Decision 2005Da5867 Decided May 31, 2007, etc.). Meanwhile, in providing medical treatment, a doctor shall have the reasonable discretion to choose the patient’s conditions, the level of medical treatment at the time, and the method of medical treatment deemed appropriate based on his/her own knowledge and experience, and a doctor shall not be deemed to have been negligent in taking any other measures, unless it exceeds a reasonable scope.
(2) In light of the purport of the entire pleadings and the result of the examination of evidence, the court has determined the origin of facts with free conviction in accordance with logical and empirical rules based on the ideology of social justice and equity, so long as it does not exceed the bounds of the principle of free evaluation of evidence, the value of evidence should be determined unless it exceeds the bounds of the principle of free evaluation of evidence.