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Giusti v. Mt. Clemens General Hospital12/2/2003
to establish that the requirements of MCL 600.2169 have been met with regard to either physician.
Further, even if Dr. Larkin was qualified to render expert testimony as to the applicable standard of care related to plaintiff's emergency room visits, his testimony regarding a breach of that standard and causation consisted of, as held by the trial court, "nothing more than conjecture concerning 'inappropriate' behavior hypothetically attributed to an emergency room nurse." And, even if Dr. Kaner was qualified to render causation testimony, he was not qualified to testify as to the standard of care and breach of the standard of care related to the treatment rendered by emergency room physicians during plaintiff's emergency room visits. Therefore, this issue is without merit. In sum, the trial court properly granted summary disposition in MCGH's favor because plaintiff lacked sufficient expert testimony to establish a prima facie case of medical malpractice.
Affirmed.
Bill Schuette, Mark J. Cavanagh.
WHITE, J. ( concurring in part and dissenting in part ).
I respectfully dissent from the majority's determination that the trial court properly disqualified Dr. Baker as an expert witness. Dr. Baker, who is board-certified in emergency medicine, never testified that he did not spend a majority of his time in ER clinical practice. Dr. Baker testified that in 1997 he spent twenty to twenty-four hours a week in ER clinical practice. He also testified that in 1997 he was doing eight to ten shifts of ER a month, while the full-timers were doing about fourteen shifts. Clearly, that is more than "half-time," and Dr. Baker's use of that term at his deposition was an approximation, as his testimony makes clear:
Q: During the 1997 period that's the issue -- the focus on what the case is here, half of your time was spent in ER clinical. And what were you doing with the rest of your professional time?
A: Well, I spent -and, you know, I sort of say half-time, but it was actually more than 20 hours a week because we also worked 12-hour shifts. We worked eights and twelves, so it was on the average of say, 20 to 24 hours a week. But, you know, I considered myself to be half-time clinical. I spend about one day a week doing this sort of stuff. I spend about another day a week doing medical education related things, mostly related to my own CME. And then at that time, I was spending a significant amount of time working on overseas programs, mostly in Russia and the former Soviet Union.
Thus, I disagree with the majority's assertion that Dr. Baker's testimony was "clear and unequivocal--he only devoted half of his professional time to the active clinical practice of emergency medicine . . . " Dr. Baker's enumeration of how he spent his days, cited by the majority as evidence that he did not devote more than half his time to ER clinical practice, was in response to questioning regarding what else he did with his time, i.e., what he did with his time beyond the more than half-time he devoted to ER clinical practice.
Further, Dr. Baker's affidavit does not contradict his deposition testimony. The affidavit states "I devoted a majority of my professional time to the active clinical practice of emergency medicine in the year immediately preceding the events in question," which is completely in keeping with Dr. Baker's deposition testimony.
I agree with the majority's rejection of plaintiff's remaining arguments. With respect to Dr. Mauskop, plaintiff failed to show that he actually provided adequate proximate cause testimony. Regarding Drs. Larkin and Kaner, plaintiff failed to show that they in fact would provi
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