The plaintiff had surgery on his left ankle to address issues with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) in that ankle. There were complications with the surgery when the drill bit shattered in his ankle bone. During a subsequent follow up appointment for an x-ray of his left ankle, a hospital staffer greeted the plaintiff with a wheelchair. While navigating the hospital an incident occurred in which the plaintiff’s extended left ankle made contact with a desk. Despite this incident, x-rays were taken. The x-rays showed a lateral displacement in the osteotomy; i.e., the fracture was not correctly aligned, that required a second surgery.
The plaintiff subsequently filed a lawsuit against the hospital alleging, in part: “The unknown female St. Elizabeth Florence employee’s negligent, grossly negligent, and careless transportation of the Plaintiff caused the Plaintiff’s surgically repaired ankle to be forcefully impacted into a registration desk, displacing the surgical hardware recently inserted into the bone in his ankle, necessitating a second, more invasive surgical procedure that permanently restricts Plaintiff’s range of motion in his left ankle.”
Based upon the depositions of the parties’ experts and consistent with its own ruling that expert medical testimony was required on causation, the trial court granted summary judgment to the defendant hospital. The plaintiff appealed. The Kentucky Court of Appeals reversed, holding that the “injuries do not require a medical expert to relay to a layperson the cause-and-effect relationship between the [hospital staffer] employee’s conduct and Arnsperger’s injury.”
The Kentucky Supreme Court stated in its January 18, 2024 published opinion: “We are content to concede that Arnsperger and the Court of Appeals are correct that the standard of care for a hospital staffer pushing a wheelchair-bound patient needs no expert testimony. But that overlooks the fact that Arnsperger has always assumed the collision with the desk caused his injury, whereas his medical history in the days preceding the collision and the medical testimony of Dr. Shamsi and Dr. Patel call that assumption into doubt. The thing does not speak for itself. The instrumentality which caused the injury is disputed, thus, that the injury was caused by the desk collision is also disputed. This disputed question of causation is beyond the common knowledge of the jury. The error of the Court of Appeals lay entirely on its narrow focus on the elements of duty and breach for the hospital staffer pushing Arnsperger in his wheelchair, when the issue is whether the act of pushing Arnsperger into the desk caused his claimed injuries. As such, the fact that Arnsperger only days earlier had a surgery on the left ankle, and the successful outcome of that surgery was in question at the time of the injury, is critical to properly determining the question before us. In as simple terms as possible, the question is whether a jury could conclude that the lateral displacement in Arnsperger’s left ankle was caused by the desk collision on December 18 merely from the fact that the desk collision occurred. It could not.”
“Even assuming this is not a medical malpractice case in the strict sense, causation is still a disputed element of Arnsperger’s negligence tort claim and the trial court concluded that expert testimony was necessary.”
Saint Elizabeth Medical Center, Inc. v. Arnsperger, 2022-SC-0302-DG.
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