Piercing the doctrine of corporate hospital liability

Abstract

According to the doctrine of corporate hospital liability, hospitals may be held liable for the negligent conduct of their nonemployee, professionally autonomous staff physicians. This Comment concludes that courts that have adopted this principle have ignored basic procedural and organizational realities of hospital and medical practice which make the imposition of corporate liability unsound. The author submits that the more logical defendants are those staff physicians who are unaware of the negligent physician's incompetence and fail to take reasonable steps to prevent the plaintiff's injury.