CAROLE MASO v. BRIAN ZEH

A woman sued a physician after her husband died following a medical procedure performed with help from a physician assistant (PA). She argued the doctor should be automatically responsible for the PA's actions under Georgia's Physician Assistant Act. The Court of Appeals of Georgia ruled that the Act itself does not create this kind of automatic responsibility, and the widow asked the Supreme Court of Georgia to review that ruling. The Supreme Court denied the petition to review the case, meaning the Court of Appeals' decision stands. Justice Pinson wrote separately to explain that while there is a reasonable legal argument that supervising doctors could be responsible for their PAs under ordinary agency law, that specific argument was never properly raised or appealed in this case, so the court could not fully address it here.

The court denied review, leaving intact the Court of Appeals' holding that the Physician Assistant Act itself does not create vicarious liability for supervising physicians for their PAs' medical acts, without resolving whether ordinary principal-agent liability law might apply.

The ruling leaves in place a Court of Appeals decision that Georgia's Physician Assistant Act alone does not make doctors automatically liable for their PAs' errors. Patients, doctors, and hospitals across Georgia continue to operate under this limited rule until a future case squarely raises the broader agency-law question.

Certiorari denied

1. Justice Pinson explained that under long-standing Georgia agency law (O.C.G.A. § 51-2-1), a principal can be held responsible for the wrongful acts of an agent acting on the principal's behalf, and this rule has historically applied to health care relationships.
2. He noted that the Physician Assistant Act sets up a relationship between a supervising physician and a physician assistant that closely resembles a principal-agent relationship, since the physician directs and supervises the PA's medical tasks.
3. He observed that nothing in the Act clearly overrides or replaces these traditional agency-liability rules, so if a true principal-agent relationship exists, ordinary vicarious liability principles could still make a physician responsible for a PA's acts.
4. However, he pointed out that the widow's case did not actually raise this principal-agent theory on appeal: her separate 'actual agency' claim had been rejected by the trial court and never cross-appealed, so only the narrower question of whether the statute itself imposes liability was before the court.
5. Because the broader agency-based liability question was not properly presented, Pinson agreed the court should decline review here, while noting the issue is important and could be addressed in a future case that raises it directly.

• physician assistant liability
• vicarious liability
• medical malpractice
• certiorari denial
• Physician Assistant Act