Reddy v. Belton

905 S.E.2d 324

REDDY

v.BELTON et al.

A24A0816

Court of Appeals of Georgia.

August 12, 2024

Daniel James Huff, Atlanta, Randolph Page Powell Jr., Eric Marquel A. Wilder, Alexander Collins Vey, for Appellant.

Forrest B. Johnson, Stanford Nathan Klinger, Atlanta, Anna Green Cross, Meredith Charlotte Kincaid, Meghan Renee Hatfield Yanacek, for Appellee.

Gobeil, Judge.

Wanda Benning Belton, individually and as Administrator of the Estate of Henry Benning ("Decedent"), along with Veronica Benning, Rhonda Brown, and Awona Love (collectively, the "Plaintiffs"), filed suit against Ramesh R. Reddy, M. D., arising out of the death of their father, Decedent. In the instant appeal, Dr. Reddy challenges the trial court’s grant of partial summary judgment to the Plaintiffs on the issues of duty, breach, and causation in this underlying medical malpractice action. For the reasons that follow, we now reverse the judgment and remand to the trial court for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

A trial court properly grants a motion for summary judgment when there are no genuine issues of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. On appeal of a grant of summary judgment, we conduct a de novo review, and we view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.

Holcomb Investments Ltd. v. Keith Hardware, Inc., 354 Ga. App. 270, 271, 840 S.E.2d 646 (2020) (citation and punctuation omitted). So viewed, the record shows that on January 21, 2019, Decedent, who was 78 years old at the time, was admitted to a rehabilitation facility run by Pruitt Health Christian City LLC d/b/a Christian City Rehabilitation ("Pruitt Health") in Union City following abdominal surgery. Dr. Reddy was Decedent’s primary attending physician at the rehabilitation facility. A few days later, on January 25, 2019, Decedent fell at the facility and complained of head pain. Dr. Reddy was notified of the fall shortly after 7:00 a.m. on January 25 and ordered x-rays. Decedent’s condition deteriorated, and on January 27 he became unresponsive and was transferred to Grady Hospital. At the hospital, a CT scan of his head showed that Decedent had subdural and intracranial hemorrhages.¹ Based on his poor prognosis, Decedent was recommended for palliative care. He was subsequently transferred to hospice care, where he died on February 2, 2019.

In December 2020, the Plaintiffs filed a medical malpractice suit,² as amended, alleging in pertinent part that Dr. Reddy failed to properly examine Decedent immediately after the fall, and had Decedent been timely transferred to a hospital, he would have received proper neurosurgical intervention and treatment and survived. In support of their position, the Plaintiffs identified Robert Singer, M. D., an expert in the fields of neurosurgery and neurovascular surgery, and Steven Kanner, M. D., a geriatrician, to argue that timely CT imaging would have identified Decedent’s brain bleed, allowing for surgical intervention.

During discovery, Dr. Reddy identified Dave Ringer, M. D., a board-certified family medicine physician who serves as the medical director for several long-term care facilities, as a potential defense expert. In his deposition, Dr. Ringer asserted that physicians depend on nursing home staff to keep them informed of a patient’s condition; a CT scan was not clinically indicated based on what Dr. Reddy knew about Decedent’s condition following his fall; and the applicable standard of care only required the attending physician to refer the patient to a hospital when the patient’s overall condition changes. Dr. Ringer opined that, overall, Dr. Reddy’s care of Decedent complied with the standard of care, and Decedent’s outcome would not have been different because a neurosurgeon likely would not have intervened earlier based on Decedent’s age and existing medical issues. However, by his own admission, Dr. Ringer has no background or training in neurosurgery, and he stated that he would defer entirely to a neurosurgeon’s judgment in such cases.

In response, the Plaintiffs moved to exclude Dr. Ringer’s causation testimony, arguing that he was unqualified to render an opinion on Decedent’s death because he lacked the necessary experience and training in neurosurgery and treatment of brain injuries. The Plaintiffs also sought partial summary judgment on the issue of causation, asserting that because "Dr. Ringer is [Dr. Reddy’s] only expert, [Dr. Ringer’s] causation opinions should be excluded."

Dr. Reddy did not file a timely response to the Plaintiffs’ motion to exclude Dr. Ringer’s expert testimony and for partial summary judgment. After the Plaintiffs withdrew their request for a hearing on their motion, Dr. Reddy filed his response on October 13, 2023, asserting that Dr. Ringer was solely offered as an expert on the standard of care and Reddy "did not identify Dr. Ringer — and does not intend to offer him — to provide causation testimony in this case." Dr. Reddy opposed the Plaintiffs’ request for partial summary judgment on the issue of causation, arguing that the issue of whether he breached the duty of care remained unresolved.

In an order dated November 30, 2023, the trial court granted the Plaintiffs’ motion to exclude Dr. Ringer’s causation opinion based on Dr. Reddy’s concession that Dr. Ringer was not identified nor intended to be offered as a causation expert. The court went on to grant summary judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs as to the elements of duty, breach, and causation. Specifically, the court highlighted there was no dispute that Dr. Reddy and Decedent had a doctor-patient relationship and the Plaintiffs offered expert testimony from Drs. Singer and Kanner to prove that Dr. Reddy violated the standard of care, which resulted in Decedent’s death. The court also found that Dr. Reddy had not met his burden to show a jury issue existed as to causation because he "failed to point to any expert testimony that rebuts [the] Plaintiffs’ expert testimony on the issues of breach and causation." As a result, the only issue remaining for the jury was damages. This appeal followed.

In a single enumeration of error, Dr. Reddy argues that the trial court improperly granted partial summary judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs as to his liability.³ Specifically, he asserts that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment (1) as to duty and breach — even though the Plaintiffs never proved their entitlement to relief on those issues; (2) on the issues of duty and breach without giving him fair notice that it was adjudicating those issues; and (3) because Georgia law does not authorize the grant of summary judgment in favor of a plaintiff based on opinion testimony alone.

[1–6] We agree with Dr. Reddy that the trial court had no authority to issue a ruling as to the issues of duty and breach. The Plaintiffs did not move for summary judgment on these elements. Rather, they asserted that they were entitled to summary judgment as to causation because Dr. Reddy failed to put forth any evidence on this issue — aside from Dr. Ringer’s causation opinion, which had been disallowed. As a result, the issues of duty and breach were never raised below. In its order, the trial court summarily concluded that the Plaintiffs were entitled to summary judgment on the elements of duty,...