The brief
| Citation | 84 N.H. 114, 146 A. 641 (1929) |
|---|---|
| Court and year | Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1929 |
| Procedural posture | The jury found for Hawkins on the alleged guarantee. The trial court set aside the verdict as excessive under its own damages instruction; the Supreme Court found that instruction erroneous and ordered a new trial. |
| Facts | Hawkins had scar tissue on his right palm from an electrical burn about nine years earlier. McGee removed scar tissue and grafted skin from the chest. Testimony attributed a guarantee of a perfect or good hand to McGee, along with predictions about a short hospital stay and return to work. There was also evidence that McGee repeatedly sought the opportunity to operate. |
| Issue | Could the guarantee support a contract claim, and should damages compare the actual hand with its earlier condition or its promised condition? |
| Rule | For breach of a promised surgical result, compare the value to the patient of the promised hand with the value of the resulting hand, including incidental consequences fairly contemplated at formation. Pain necessarily incident to the agreed operation is part of the bargain’s cost, not a separate measure of the lost promised benefit. |
| Holding | The alleged guarantee could go to the jury, but the damages instruction was wrong. Recovery was not limited to deterioration from the earlier condition, and ordinary pain from the agreed operation did not measure the promised improvement. A new trial was required. |
Reasoning
The guarantee differed from predictions about recovery time. Repeated solicitation of the operation and the plaintiff’s proposed explanation for that solicitation could support taking the guarantee literally, if the jury accepted that evidence. An undisclosed reservation by the doctor would not defeat a promise communicated and relied upon.
The damages instruction combined operation pain with injury beyond the hand’s previous condition. The promised-result comparison instead asks what performance should have supplied, which can exceed the difference between the hand before and after surgery. Failure to improve can therefore produce contract damages even without additional physical harm.
Ordinary surgical pain was a cost Hawkins had agreed to bear for the promised benefit. The court did not decide that every possible consequence of surgery was excluded: its measure expressly included incidental consequences fairly within the parties’ contemplation. Nor did it resolve whether the jury’s amount was excessive under the correct rule.
Why it is assigned
The comparison point changes the answer. Identify the promised condition before calculating loss; a before-and-after injury calculation can omit the improvement the defendant undertook to provide.
Limits of the holding
This opinion distinguishes a possible guarantee from predictions about hospital time and recovery. It does not make every hopeful medical statement a warranty, and it does not decide the proper damages for every kind of medical promise.
Two changed-facts hypotheticals
For an exam calculation, assume the promised hand is worth $20,000 to the patient, the resulting hand $5,000, and the hand before surgery $8,000. Ignore incidental losses and valuation disputes.
Show the analysis
The promised-result gap is $15,000. A $3,000 before-and-after calculation captures deterioration but omits the promised improvement; ordinary pain necessary to the agreed operation is not added as a separate lost benefit.
A surgeon guarantees an improvement but leaves the hand exactly as it was. The patient proves a value difference between that condition and the promised improvement.
Show the analysis
No deterioration does not mean no contract loss. Hawkins expressly allows damages for a failure to improve under a proven guarantee, measured against the promised result.
Quick answers
What is the damages rule in Hawkins v. McGee?
Expectation damages: the value of the hand as promised minus the value of the hand as it was after the operation.