Case Digest: CONCEPCION ILAO-ORETA v. SPOUSES EVA MARIE and BENEDICTO NOEL RONQUILLO, et al.

CONCEPCION ILAO-ORETA v. SPOUSES EVA MARIE and BENEDICTO NOEL RONQUILLO, et al.

                  Respondent spouses Eva Marie Ronquillo and Noel Benedicto Ronquillo had not been blessed with a child despite several years of marriage. They thus consulted petitioner Dr. Concepcion Ilao-Oreta, an obstetrician-gynecologist-consultant and chief of the Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Section at the St. Luke‘s Medical Center. Dr. Ilao-Oreta advised Eva Marie to undergo a laparoscopic procedure whereby a laparascope would be inserted through the patient‘s abdominal wall to get a direct view of her internal reproductive organ in order to determine the real cause of her infertility.

                   The procedure was scheduled on April 5, 1999 at 2:00 p.m. to be performed by Dr. Ilao-Oreta. Eva Marie, accompanied by Noel, checked in at the St. Luke‘s Medical Center and underwent pre-operative procedures including the administration of intravenous fluid and enema. However, Dr. Ilao-Oreta did not arrive at the scheduled time for the procedure and no prior notice of its cancellation was received. It turned out that the doctor was on a return flight from Hawaii to, and arrived at 10:00 p.m. of April 5, 1999 in, Manila.

               The Ronquillo spouses filed a complaint against Dr. Ilao-Oreta and the St. Luke‘s Medical Center for breach of professional and service contract and for damages before the Regional Trial Court of Batangas City. They prayed for the award of actual damages including alleged loss of income of Noel while accompanying his wife to the hospital, moral damages, exemplary damages, costs of litigation, attorney‘s fees, and other available reliefs and remedies. The RTC decided in favor of Ronquillo spouses and awarded Eva Marie actual damages but ruled that the failure of the doctor to arrive on time was not intentional. It found no adequate proof that Noel had been deprived of any job contract while attending to his wife in the hospital. The spouses appealed to the Court of Appeals and found that Dr. Ilao-Oreta grossly negligent.

ISSUE:

Whether or not Dr. Ilao-Oreta is guilty of gross negligence for her failure to arrive at the scheduled time for the procedure

HELD:

It bears noting that when she was scheduling the date of her performance of the procedure, Dr. Ilao-Oreta had just gotten married and was preparing for her honeymoon, and it is of common human knowledge that excitement attends its preparations. Her negligence could then be partly attributed to human frailty which rules out its characterization as gross.

Dr. Ilao-Oreta‘s negligence not being gross, Ronquillo spouses are not entitled to recover moral damages. Neither are the spouses entitled to recover exemplary damages in the absence of a showing that Dr. Ilao-Oreta acted in a wanton, fraudulent, reckless, oppressive or malevolent manner, nor to award of attorney‘s fees as, contrary to the finding of the CA that the spouses “were compelled to litigate and incur expenses to protect their interest,” the records show that they did not exert enough efforts to settle the matter before going to court.