Coffee v. McDonnell-Douglas Corp.

McDonnell-Douglas (defendant) required Robert Coffee (plaintiff) to undergo a pre-employment physical, including bloodwork, before flying planes for the company, but cleared him for duty before lab results came back, per its usual procedure, and then filed his bloodwork without ever reviewing it, again per company policy; had the results been reviewed, they would have revealed Coffee's bone-marrow cancer years before it was eventually discovered following his collapse, by which point his treatment was more severe and his prognosis worse than earlier intervention would have allowed. Coffee sued McDonnell-Douglas and several doctors for negligently performing the exam; the jury found for Coffee, and McDonnell-Douglas appealed, arguing it owed no duty to discover his condition.