GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Legal Newsline) — The Michigan Court of Appeals dismissed the claims of a woman who filed a medical malpractice claim against a hospital and doctor's office, siding with the lower court.
The three-judge panel consisting of judges Mark T. Boonstra, Michael J. Riordan and James Robert Redford found that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it sanctioned the plaintiff, Sharon Fasse, for failing to follow the court's direction regarding filing schedules, as well as other orders.
"The trial court had previously verbally reprimanded plaintiff without effect, and had imposed a monetary sanction that not only had no effect but that went unpaid," the April 16 opinion states.
"In its October 15, 2018 order imposing that monetary sanction, it also warned plaintiff that she risked dismissal of her case if she engaged in further noncompliance with its discovery orders. We conclude that the sanction chosen by the trial court was within the range of reasonable and principled outcomes."
Fasse filed a lawsuit against Alpena Regional Medical Center, MidMichigan Medical Center-Alpena, Alpena Surgical Associates and Drs. Sandra L. Mantz, Christopher Bullock and Brian S. Hanna in 2017, claiming they misdiagnosed her has having colon cancer.
Throughout the lawsuit, Fasse failed to comply with discovery requests, scheduling of depositions, document production requests and interrogatories. The defendants filed several motions to compel her to comply, but she failed to do so. The court then warned her that she was ordered to answer the requests and that she had to pay a $300 sanction for failing to do so.
Despite the sanction and order, Fasse again failed to comply and never paid the sanction and later asked the court to reconsider, claiming she had complied via email to the defendants, but the defendants denied they ever received the alleged email.
The court denied the motion for reconsideration and Fasse then appealed to the Court of Appeals.
"In this case, plaintiff’s failure to respond to defendants’ five attempts to schedule a deposition date over a two-month period and failure to respond to any discovery requests required defendants to file multiple motions to compel and hindered defendants’ ability to prepare a defense," the three-judge panel wrote.
"Additionally, plaintiff’s failure to comply with a stipulated order to file a preliminary witness list, and only disclosing Dr. Levin as her expert on the very last day of the deadline for filing final lay and expert witness lists, shortened the time that defendants had before trial to depose him and prepare a defense; this shortened time was further shortened by plaintiff’s unresponsiveness regarding the scheduling of the deposition."
The appellate court concluded that the trial court appropriately granted the defendants' motion to dismiss because Fasse did not establish a case for medical malpractice because she could not without the testimony of an expert witness.
Michigan Court of Appeals case number: 346924