MONTGOMERY, Ala. (Legal Newsline) – A woman who sued her legal team after she lost a medical malpractice lawsuit couldn’t convince the Supreme Court of Alabama to overturn the ruling against her.
On Sept. 13, the Supreme Court affirmed the judgment from the Mobile Circuit Court and ruled in favor of Dennis E. Goldasich Jr. and other attorneys and law firms.
Belle sued the defendants on allegations of legal malpractice, fraudulent concealment and negligence, with claims that the defendants breached the standard of care when they didn’t inform her that some of the defendant attorneys allegedly were negligent when writing the medical malpractice complaint or that she had a possible legal malpractice lawsuit because of the alleged breach.
But the defendants argued that when it came to her fraudulent concealment complaint, “Belle cannot prevail on her claim because it is undisputed that they had no knowledge of the supposed fact that they allegedly suppressed – that Belle had a potential legal-malpractice claim against the attorneys who drafted the April 2011 complaint – while they represented her because she did not, in fact, have such a claim,” Justice Jay Mitchell wrote in the ruling.
Justices Alisa Kelli Wise, William B. Sellers and Sarah Hicks Stewart concurred and Chief Justice Tom Parker and ujstices Michael F. Bolin, James G. Shaw, Tommy Bryan and Brady E. Mendheim Jr. concurred in the result.
Mitchell noted that the lower court permitted Belle to change her complaint to point out that one of the physicians in her medical malpractice case had a urinary tract infection theory. That claim was pending until after Goldasich and his firm withdrew from the case.
“Goldasich and the Goldasich firm could not have informed Belle that she had a legal-malpractice claim when the physicians filed their partial-summary-judgment motion in 2017 because there was, in fact, no basis on which to assert such a claim at that time,” Mitchell wrote. "Goldasich and the Goldasich firm, therefore, did not breach the standard of care by not informing Belle that she had a potential legal malpractice claim against the drafters of the April 2011 complaint, and the judgment on the pleadings entered by the trial court in their favor was proper."
Belle initially sued a number of health care providers over allegations of medical malpractice on behalf of the late Edith Louise Mitchell. Mitchell was taken to a hospital on April 23, 2009, for complaints of chest pain and died on April 30, 2009. Belle filed her complaint in April 2011.
While Belle was able to reach a settlement agreement with all but two of the physicians, a lower court ruled in favor of those physicians, ending the medical malpractice lawsuit. Belle then sued her legal team for legal malpractice, claiming that they were negligent.
She alleged that the defendants “had negligently failed to assert a claim against the two physicians for failing to diagnose and treat Mitchell’s urinary-tract infection before the statute of limitations for that claim expired,” the opinion states.
The defendants denied the claims and insisted that her claims were barred, and the Circuit Court ruled in their favor.