Estate Failed To Show EMS Violated Standard Of Care: The Court of Appeals of Georgia (“Georgia Appellate Court”) stated in its June 7, 2023 Opinion: “the crucial question here is, whether under any duty, National EMS violated the standard of care in not searching for a patient after law enforcement cleared the scene and told National EMS’s workers that they could cancel their response and, thus, breached that duty. Given the foregoing, and our determination in Division 1, Smith’s Estate has failed as a matter of law to show any breach of duty caused by a deviation from any appropriate standard of care in the situation at issue here.”
The Georgia Appellate Court stated: “McCans [the Estate’s EMS expert] is clearly an experienced paramedic, and stated opinions formed on the basis of his experience. However, the opinions that he expressed based on that experience were not directly on point with the question before the trial court regarding emergency responders’ duty after a 911 scene has been cleared by law enforcement and responders have been told they may cancel their response.
Here, McCans specifically testified that he was unaware of any standard, protocol, law or regulation – whether national, regional, or in Georgia – addressing the precise situation at issue in the instant case. While he did testify that, in his experience, EMTs and paramedics he had worked with or observed were “more aggressive” in attempting to find a patient, he did not aver that this experience amounted to any sort of standard or duty of care applicable anywhere – much less in Georgia – in cases where police examine a scene, tell EMTs no patient was found – or, in Surine’s words, that the potential patient “[d]oesn’t want to come to the door[.]” Although McCans deposed that “the end of staging” – meaning the point at which law enforcement notifies EMTs that it has completed a safety assessment – “isn’t cancellation” of an emergency response, and that police indicating “I don’t want you, you can go, or you’ve got to go” does not mean EMTs cannot continue to do their jobs, he specifically acknowledged that he had never heard anyone else in his profession articulate that standard.
McCans has, at best, identified “discretionary” and “non-prohibited” actions by emergency responders applicable to a situation in which police examine the scene of a 911 call and tell responders that a patient cannot be or does not want to be found. He has specifically testified that others in his profession have not articulated any standard regarding what responders’ duties are when police tell them they can or must cancel a call. Pretermitting any inconsistencies in McCans’ affidavit and deposition testimony, which we do not assess, we find that the trial court erred in denying National EMS’s motion to exclude McCans’ opinion testimony. McCans has essentially opined that National EMS should have done more, but has not established that a recognized standard of care required it to do more, nor has he articulated any standard of care requiring emergency responders to disbelieve or override what they are told by law enforcement at the scene. McCans has not articulated a reliable standard of care either through his own specific experience or that of others in his profession applicable to the situation at issue. Nor has he reliably applied any standard to the facts of this case. When engaging in a reliability analysis, courts must be careful to focus on the expert’s “principles and methodology, not on the conclusions that they generate.””
Source Smith v. National Emergency Medical Services, Inc., A23A0469.
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