Sommers Schwartz Secures Game-Changing Victory for Medical Malpractice Victims Before Michigan Supreme Court
The decision will reduce the likelihood that defendants can improperly disqualify a plaintiff’s required medical expert.
The appellate team at Sommers Schwartz recently obtained a victory before the Michigan Supreme Court that will have significant ramifications for all medical malpractice victims in the state. By agreeing with the arguments of the firm’s attorneys, the Court clarified an ambiguity in the law concerning the qualifications of medical experts whose opinions and testimony are both required and often case-determinative. That clarification in Stokes v. Swofford will make it far less likely that medical malpractice defendants can disqualify a plaintiff’s medical expert based on inappropriate distinctions between specialties and subspecialties.
In most medical malpractice cases in Michigan, at the time a Complaint is filed, a plaintiff must submit an affidavit of merit prepared by a medical expert witness who can offer opinions and testimony about the alleged breaches of the standard of care committed by the defendant. Further, at trial, a medical malpractice claim must be supported by opinion testimony from a qualified expert witness. Courts are empowered to rule on whether or not an expert is properly qualified under the criteria outlined in MCL 600.2169. That statute provides, in part, that a medical expert presented by a plaintiff must specialize, at the time of the occurrence that is the basis for the action, in the same specialty as the medical provider against whom the testimony is offered. Additionally, if the defendant provider against whom the claim is made is a board-certified specialist, the expert witness must also be a board-certified specialist in that specialty.
Many, if not most, specialties in the medical profession include distinct subspecialties. In its 2006 decision Woodard v Custer, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that if a defendant physician specialized in a subspecialty and was certified in and practicing that subspecialty, the plaintiff’s expert witness must be certified in the same subspecialty as the defendant physician to be deemed qualified by the judge.
The practical effect of the Woodard decision was to severely restrict the available pool of qualified experts who could submit affidavits of merit and offer opinions on behalf of medical malpractice plaintiffs at trial. Thus, even otherwise qualified and credentialed experts who were board-certified in the same specialty as the defendant could be disqualified unless they practiced and/or taught more than 50% of their professional time in the same subspecialty. The inability to obtain and offer the opinions of qualified expert could be fatal for a medical malpractice case.
In its 4-3 decision in favor of Sommers Schwartz’s client, the Supreme Court found that the test it adopted in Woodard was inconsistent with the language of the expert witness statute as it conflated the terms “specialty” and “subspeciality.”
“In sum,” the Court concluded, “the ‘matching’ required by MCL 600.2169(1) is limited to general board specialties and does not require precise matching of subspecialties.”
The result obtained by the firm’s exceptional appellate team is not just a victory for one client who lost their life due to an act of medical malpractice; it represents a win for all victims of medical errors in Michigan who now stand a far better chance of retaining a qualified expert who can support their claims. The firm congratulates the team on this significant achievement.
