How have courts interpreted consent in the context of a medical malpractice case?

^10. On the other hand, in Piedra v. Dugan, supra, 123 Cal.App.4th 1483, a nonsuit was properly granted where the evidence showed a plaintiff's parents had conditioned their consent for the defendant to administer medication on their knowledge of all the medications, but no evidence they had communicated that consent to the defendant physician. (Id. at pp. 1497-1498.) The court held that in the absence of defendant's actual knowledge of the condition, there was no evidence of an intentional violation of the scope of consent necessary for a medical battery, an intentional tort. (Id. at pp. 1498-1499.)

^11. In Rains, psychiatrists obtained consent for treatment through misrepresentations about the therapeutic value of their services, when in fact they used the program as a pretext for other purposes, including to receive donations. (Rains v. Superior Court, supra, 150 Cal.App.3d at p. 936.) Rains held such allegations stated a claim for battery: "[T]he therapeutic versus nontherapeutic purpose of touching by a psychiatrist goes to the 'essential character of the act itself' and thus vitiates consent obtained by fraud as to that character." (Id. at p. 941.) The court explained that its conclusion was consistent with these principles because "where a physician intends to perform treatment for a nontherapeutic purpose when consent was given only for a therapeutic purpose" (id. at pp. 941-942), there has been an intentional deviation from the consent, as where a physician performs a wholly different treatment from that consented to. (Ibid.)