Arato v. Avedon
Supreme Court of California
858 P.2d 598 (1993)
Arato's oncologists, including Avedon (defendant), didn't disclose statistical pancreatic-cancer mortality rates before treatment, reasoning that such population-level statistics have little predictive value for an individual patient and that direct disclosure of the extremely high mortality rate might undermine Arato's hope; Arato's wife (plaintiff) sued for lack of informed consent after his death, arguing he would have declined treatment had he known the bleak statistics, and every physician-witness testified such population statistics are unreliable for predicting an individual's outcome.
Whether, to effectively obtain informed consent, a physician must disclose all material information to a patient that the physician knows or should know would be regarded as significant by a reasonable person in the patient's position when deciding to accept or reject medical treatment.