Summary Judgment: Pinellas County, Florida (Medical Malpractice)
We represented a trauma surgeon and his practice in this case, that arose from Plaintiff’s presentation to the hospital after a bicycle accident. Upon arrival to the ER, the trauma surgeon ordered multiple CT scans, including one for Plaintiff’s cervical spine. Although Plaintiff initially complained of numbness and tingling to his lower extremities and an inability to move his lower extremities, records demonstrated that during the progression of his ER presentation, Plaintiff was able to move all of his extremities, bear weight, and withdraw from pain. None of the objective assessments, including the CT scan of his cervical spine, showed any signs of an acute spinal cord injury. As a result, the trauma surgeon discharged the Plaintiff home with instructions to follow up if his symptoms worsened. Plaintiff never returned. Instead, eleven days later he walked into a different hospital reporting neck pain along with numbness and weakness of his lower extremities. An MRI at the second hospital demonstrated an acute spinal injury and Plaintiff underwent spinal surgery.
Plaintiff filed suit against our client, alleging that the surgeon’s discharge of Plaintiff constituted a reckless disregard for the Plaintiff’s care and treatment and caused him to undergo spinal surgery that resulted in injuries including an inability to walk independently.
During the course of the litigation, Plaintiff’s trauma surgery expert opined at deposition that our client did not act with reckless disregard or cause the injuries Plaintiff complained of. As a result, Plaintiff filed an Affidavit of an Emergency Medicine physician expert but this expert’s opinions were stricken by the Court because he was not in the same specialty as our Defendant.
This case was in litigation for over six years, and during that time several good faith efforts to settle were rejected. As such, we moved for summary judgment, citing Plaintiff’s failure to provide any admissible expert opinions that showed our client breached the standard of care. The Court agreed, and summary judgment was granted.
