Ramirez v. Long Beach Memorial Med. Ctr. — Jan. 2017 (Summary)

MALPRACTICE PHYSICIAN AND HOSPITAL

Ramirez v. Long Beach Mem’l Med. Ctr.
No. B265548 (Cal. Ct. App. Jan. 19, 2017)

The California Court of Appeal for the Second District affirmed the judgment of a lower court which held that plaintiffs who brought a wrongful death action could not conduct further discovery after summary judgment had been granted by the lower court for all but one defendant.

The plaintiffs represented a decedent who was rushed to the emergency room of the defendant hospital after being shot in the leg.  The hospital physician instructed the unit secretary to contact the on-call vascular surgeon.  After contacting the incorrect vascular surgeon initially, the unit secretary succeeded in reaching the correct vascular surgeon who arrived at the hospital, after a short delay, and operated on the decedent.  Prior to the vascular surgeon’s arrival and again after the four-hour surgery was complete, the decedent suffered heart attacks.  He was pronounced dead following the second heart attack.

At trial, the plaintiffs sued for malpractice and negligence, claiming that the delay in administering treatment to the decedent was the proximate cause of his death.  Both the plaintiffs and defendants summoned expert witnesses to testify.  At the summary judgment stage, the court found that the actions of the vascular surgeon, nurse, and on-call service all comported with their respective standards of care.  This ruling foreclosed any future litigation over the vicarious liability of the hospital for the actions of the exculpated individuals.

The plaintiffs requested additional discovery with respect to the on-call list and the unit secretary, the only other individual who took part in the care of the decedent the night of his death and who did not obtain a summary judgment ruling.  The plaintiffs premised this request for additional discovery on the unit secretary’s alleged negligence which, they argued, could be imputed to the hospital.  The court, however, disagreed.  The court held that the plaintiffs failed to raise an inference of negligence on the part of the hospital because there was no evidence that the unit secretary was in charge of creating or managing the hospital’s on-call list and, therefore, was not liable for the delay that resulted from contacting the incorrect physician.  Further, the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses made no argument during discovery regarding the unit secretary’s standard of care and, even if they had, the court found that the expert witnesses would have lacked foundation to competently attest to the “internal emergency room procedures regarding preparation and maintenance of a list of on-call physicians.”

Finally, the court pointed out that the delay in treatment was not, alone, sufficient evidence to bolster any inference of negligence committed by the hospital.  Because the plaintiffs’ expert witnesses did not produce any evidence of how the delay in treatment deviated from the standard of care in emergency room hospitals, the court found the plaintiffs’ allegations of the hospital’s negligence unfounded.  Accordingly, the court affirmed the lower court’s denial of the plaintiffs’ motion for further discovery and affirmed the award of summary judgment in the hospital’s favor.