LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (Legal Newsline) - The Arkansas Supreme Court dismissed a class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 2,000 patients of a doctor who was dismissed from his hospital practice, ruling the lead plaintiff couldn’t claim he wasn’t notified of the doctor’s new whereabouts since he obtained the information before filing suit.
In a decision that drew a dissent by the chief justice and two other judges, the majority ruled plaintiff Ford Baldwin couldn’t represent other patients in a lawsuit over the Arkansas Patient Right-To-Know Act. The law is intended to ensure continuity of care and requires medical centers to provide doctors with a list of their patients within 21 days of when they leave the institution and to notify patients of a doctor’s new location if the patient asks.
The problem for Baldwin is he already knew where his doctor had gone. Baldwin sued St. Vincent Medical Group for violating the Right-To-Know Act after the hospital terminated his primary-care physician in 2019. In his proposed class action, Baldwin claimed St. Vincent failed to provide his doctor with a list of patients as required under the law, and failed to notify patients of the doctor’s new location.
St. Vincent’s moved to dismiss the case, saying Baldwin wasn’t an “affected patient” under the law since he had contacted his doctor and received the new location. But Pulaski County Judge Morgan Welch disagreed, allowing the class action to proceed.
St. Vincent's filed an interlocutory appeal and the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed Judge Welch in an Oct. 26 decision that was supported by the Arkansas Hospital Association.
The court acknowledged that it wasn’t supposed to delve into the merits of the underlying case but that it must decide whether Arkansas law was properly applied, citing a prior decision involving a class action. And in this case, the court ruled, the statute defines “existing patient” but not “affected patient.” Since the law uses both terms, the court assumed legislators intended them to mean different populations, and Baldwin wasn’t representative of “affected patients.” He already had notice of his doctor’s new location.
“Existing patients were not necessarily affected patients,” the majority ruled. “And in order to establish liability, the court would have to determine which of Dr. Anderson’s existing patients were affected.”
Justice Karen Baker dissented, joined by Chief Justice Dan Kemp and Justice Courtney Ray Hudson. Despite saying five times they weren’t delving into the merits, the majority did exactly that by deciding Baldwin didn’t have a legitimate claim, she wrote.
“The majority has ignored decades of precedent and simply chooses to delve into the merits in order to reverse and remand the class-certification order,” she said.