During the legal proceedings, the hospital’s attorneys filed a Motion for Summary Judgment (MSJ). In simple terms, this is a request for the court to rule that the other party has no case. If the judge grants the MSJ, it would avoid a jury trial and end the hospital’s involvement in the lawsuit (although the general surgeon and neurosurgeon would still be involved).
The Motion for Summary Judgment has several arguments:
Corporate Practice of Medicine
The plaintiff argued that the hospital had a responsibility to make sure the patient was transferred. The hospital disagreed because in Colorado, corporations cannot practice medicine. Only the physician can make medical decisions (including transfer decisions). By law, the hospital can’t be held responsible for the transfer decision, because the hospital is a corporation that can’t practice medicine.
The judge agreed that the hospital could not be held liable for the physician’s decisions, but it could be found liable for the actions of it’s nurses. Therefore this part of the MSJ was denied.
Transfer Delay
The plaintiff argues that delays in obtaining the second CT scan and the transfer order were the fault of the hospital (approximately 1 hour 39 minutes delay). They specifically argue that this delay contributed to the patient’s injuries. However, the expert witnesses did not offer any specific evidence to support this aside from the general platitude “time is brain”. The defendants claim that simply stating “time is brain” should not be considered evidence.
The judge denied this part of the motion for summary judgment, as there were multiple other points where the expert witnesses stated that the patient may have not suffered any injury if the operation was done sooner.
Neurosurgeon Motion for Summary Judgment
The neurosurgeon also filed a Motion for Summary Judgment. His attorneys argued that consulting by phone (including discussion of her specific history and physical examination, reviewing her CT scans and offering to accept her transfer) did not establish a physician-patient relationship.
The judge agreed that no physician-patient relationship was present, but felt that there was a separate issue of common-law duty of care that would need to be determined by a jury. Therefore his MSJ was denied.
As the jury trial approached, all parties involved reached an agreement to settle the case and dismiss the lawsuit. The court was called into session simply to take care of a few remaining technical issues.
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