## Facts

- Javier Vergara was born on May 31, 1979, at Adams Memorial Hospital in Decatur, Indiana.
- Javier’s parents alleged that Dr. John Doan, the obstetrician who delivered Javier, negligently managed labor and delivery, causing severe and permanent injuries.
- The case was tried to a jury, which returned a verdict for Dr. Doan.
- On appeal, the parents challenged Indiana’s physician standard of care instruction, urging abandonment of the “modified locality rule,” which tied the standard to practice in “similar localities.”
- The Indiana Supreme Court accepted review to determine the proper standard of care for medical malpractice actions.

## Issues

1. Whether Indiana should retain the modified locality rule for physician malpractice or replace it with a more general, objective standard of professional negligence.
2. Whether giving a modified-locality jury instruction in this case required reversal of the defense verdict.

## Decision

- The court abandoned the modified locality rule as the governing formulation of physician standard of care.
- The court adopted a standard requiring physicians to exercise the care, skill, and proficiency of reasonably careful, skillful, and prudent practitioners in the same class, acting under the same or similar circumstances.
- The court held that locality may be considered as part of the “same or similar circumstances,” but it no longer defines the legal standard.
- The court affirmed the judgment for Dr. Doan, concluding that use of the modified-locality instruction did not warrant reversal under the circumstances of this trial.

## Legal Principles

- Physician negligence is measured by the conduct of reasonably careful, skillful, and prudent practitioners in the same class, under the same or similar circumstances.
- Local conditions (including available facilities and resources) may be relevant factual circumstances, but locality does not set a separate, lower, or different legal standard of care.
- A change in the articulation of the standard of care does not require a new trial when the charge as a whole and the admitted evidence show no substantial likelihood of a different verdict under the new standard.

## Conclusion

Indiana replaced its modified locality rule with a same-class, similar-circumstances standard for medical malpractice while affirming the defendant’s verdict because the locality-based instruction, in the context of the full charge and evidence, did not materially affect the outcome.


Vergara ex rel. Vergara v. Doan, 593 N.E.2d 185 (Ind. 1992)