Personal Injury Law

New Maryland Malpractice Expert CSA Opinion

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals decided a new malpractice case in Wantz v. Afzal.

Wantz is a Frederick County medical malpractice wrongful death case involving a staph infection following spinal fusion surgery after a slip and fall that allegedly caused the death of Plaintiffs' 77 year-old mother.

During discovery, Plaintiffs' malpractice lawyer proffered three medical experts: (1) a neurosurgeon, who testified in a videotaped trial deposition as to the cause of the woman's paralysis and her likelihood of recovery, (2) a board certified doctor in in internal and geriatric medicine to testify on causation, and (3) a radiologist who testified that had the woman been properly immobilized her paralysis and and subsequent infection would not have happened.

The trial court struck all three experts. The CSA, in an opinion by Judge James R. Eyler, unanimously disagreed on all three experts, finding that on each expert, the trial court abused its discretion.

The doctors argued that the neurosurgeon was not qualified to testify because his only 50 years of experience in neurosurgery was not enough to qualify him as an experts. I'm just kidding, even Med Mutual is not making these kind of arguments. I'm just making sure you are paying attention. The doctors' objection was more thin sliced: the expert's relative inexperience with performing spinal fusion surgery or following patients after such surgery did not provide the necessary experience to offer testimony in this malpractice case.

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on March 01, 2011 (boomark / email).