On August 24, 2016, Jeff Segrest, M.D. performed a vein-ablation procedure on Sandra Phillips’s right leg. Thereafter, Phillips developed an infection in her upper right thigh, and she was treated by Dr. Steven M. Taylor. Dr. Taylor first examined Phillips on September 21, 2016, and subsequently performed three irrigation and debridement (“I & D”) procedures on her on October 26, 2016, December 1, 2016, and January 30, 2017.
On March 28, 2017, during the wound-healing process after the January 30, 2017 I & D procedure, Dr. Taylor removed a 4″ x 4″ piece of gauze from Phillips’s wound. Potential explanations for the presence of the gauze were that at an earlier point in Phillips’s treatment Dr. Taylor had failed to remove it when he should have or that Phillips or a wound-care nurse had failed to remove it when changing and dressing Phillips’s wound at her home or during Phillips’s wound-check examinations before March 28, 2017.
On July 9, 2018, Phillips filed in the circuit court an Alabama medical malpractice complaint against Dr. Taylor, SBMC, and various fictitiously named defendants. On December 10, 2024, Dr. Taylor filed a motion to dismiss “and/or” to strike Phillips’s first amended complaint. In pertinent part, Dr. Taylor argued that, pursuant to the AMLA and Rule 15, Ala. R. Civ. P., the amended complaint was “due to be stricken due to the extreme and undue delay” in filing an amendment, “which could have and should have been filed years earlier based on information readily available and provided to [Phillips].”
§ 6-5-551, Ala. Code 1975, a part of the Alabama Medical Liability Act (“AMLA”), states: “In any action for injury, damages, or wrongful death, whether in contract or in tort, against a health care provider for breach of the standard of care, whether resulting from acts or omissions in providing health care, or the hiring, training, supervision, retention, or termination of care givers, the Alabama Medical Liability Act shall govern the parameters of discovery and all aspects of the action. The plaintiff shall include in the complaint filed in the action a detailed specification and factual description of each act and omission alleged by plaintiff to render the health care provider liable to plaintiff and shall include when feasible and ascertainable the date, time, and place of the act or acts. The plaintiff shall amend his complaint timely upon ascertainment of new or different acts or omissions upon which his claim is based; provided, however, that any such amendment must be made at least 90 days before trial. Any complaint which fails to include such detailed specification and factual description of each act and omission shall be subject to dismissal for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Any party shall be prohibited from conducting discovery with regard to any other act or omission or from introducing at trial evidence of any other act or omission.”
On January 28, 2025, the circuit court held a hearing on Dr. Taylor’s motion to dismiss or to strike, after which it entered an order denying that motion. On March 11, 2025, Dr. Taylor timely filed a petition for a writ of mandamus. Specifically, Dr. Taylor requested that the circuit court be ordered to grant his motion to strike Phillips’s amended complaint based on undue delay.
The Supreme Court of Alabama stated in its decision on November 7, 2025: “Based on the materials before us, the circuit court granted Phillips leave to amend her complaint at a time when the case had not yet been set for trial. She technically needed no such leave. Nevertheless, as hereinafter discussed and based on the circumstances before us, we cannot conclude that Phillips’s amendment was timely filed in light of her failure to satisfy her obligations under § 6-5-551 or that good cause would have existed to grant Phillips leave to amend.”
“In addressing the issue of undue delay in relation to § 6-5-551, we wish to be clear. The issue is fact-specific. We are not addressing the issue whether Phillips could have amended her complaint in the manner she ultimately did if she had filed that amendment at the time of the original summary-judgment proceedings or even following the taking of
Dr. Taylor’s deposition; those circumstances are not at issue, and we will express no opinion on them. We are addressing whether, after Phillips repeatedly failed to amend her complaint when she had adequate information to do so in response to Dr. Taylor’s insistence that she comply with § 6-5-551, the circuit court exceeded its discretion by allowing her to amend her complaint (denying Dr. Taylor’s motion to strike) in November 2024.”
“Because the materials before us clearly establish “[t]ruly inordinate and unexplained delay” by Phillips regarding the
filing of her first amended complaint, i.e., undue delay for purposes of Rule 15(a), especially in light of Dr. Taylor’s timely and repeated assertion of the requirements of § 6-5-551, we conclude that the circuit court exceeded its discretion by denying Dr. Taylor’s motion to strike.”
Source Ex parte Steven M. Taylor, M.D. PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS (In re: Sandra Phillips v. Shelby Baptist Medical Center and Steven M. Taylor, M.D.), SC-2025-0164.
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