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Doctor-Patient Relationship

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A patient signed an arbitration agreement before he say the doctor for his surgery and the surgery went bad and the patient filed for compensation due to effects from the wrong doings of the doctor. The court ruled that the arbitration agreement could not be upheld. This case shows what could result in someone not being able to read legal papers before they sign or not knowing they have the right to not sign said paperwork. The majority opinion for this case is correct. the wording on the arbitration agreement was one reason as well as the fact that a doctor-patient relationship was present when Mr. King signed said agreement. Also, there are many cases that help to support the majority opinion. The plaintiffs, Robert E. King and his wife …show more content…

On July 15th, 2014, the court of appeals wrote a unpublished opinion agreeing with the findings from the trial court in May of 2013. The court of appeals stated that the defendants don’t argue that the courts’ decision was based on competent evidence. Which that ended up binding the appeal and resulted in the court of appeals refusing to address the defendants reasoning that there wasn’t a doctor-patient relationship yet formed. The court of appeals went on mentioning Tillman v. Commercial Credit Loans, Inc., 362 N.C. 93,101-02,655 S.E.2d 362, 3669-70 (2008) as well as N.C. Nat’l Bank v. Va. Carolina Builders, 307 N.C. 563, 299 S.E.2d 629, 631(1983).
The defendants filed a petition asking the court of appeals to further review their decision. The court of appeals granted the review on December 18th, 2014. The court heard the briefing and oral argument on August 21st, 2015. They then sent it to the superior court in Cumberland County to further decide if the doctor-patient relationship was present when Mr. King signed the arbitration …show more content…

the North Carolina law Koufman v. Koufman, 330 N.C. 93, 97, 408 S.E.2d 590,731 (1991) details why the appeals haven’t changed the findings. the defendants do, however, argue that the facts found fail to result in the conclusion given based off Carolina Power & Light Co. v. City of Asheville, 358 N.C. 512, 517, 597 S.E.2d 717, 721 (2004). Because of that the court decided it will review the defendants’ challenges using a de novo standard of review. The court ended up saying the result will be based off whether a relationship was present when Mr. King signed the arbitration agreement. However, they don’t think it was properly looked at based off a doctor-patient relationship. The court had decided to look at it to see if there was a fiduciary relationship present when Mr. King signed the arbitration agreement. The court went on to say that in order for there to be a breach of fiduciary, that relationship had to be present first. The court then mentions that Mr. King went to Dr. Bryant because of Dr. Bryant’s Knowledge in the surgical area needed to repair Mr.

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