Cleveland Medical Clinic, PLLC v. Jessie Easley, Administrator of the Estate of Gene Autry Easley, Deceased; ( 2024 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI
NO. 2018-CA-00329-COA
CLEVELAND MEDICAL CLINIC PLLC APPELLANT
v.
JESSIE EASLEY, ADMINISTRATOR OF THE APPELLEE
ESTATE OF GENE AUTRY EASLEY,
DECEASED
DATE OF JUDGMENT: 09/25/2017
TRIAL JUDGE: HON. ALBERT B. SMITH III
COURT FROM WHICH APPEALED: BOLIVAR COUNTY CIRCUIT COURT,
SECOND JUDICIAL DISTRICT
ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLANT: ROBERT J. DAMBRINO III
ASHLEY NOBILE LANE
ATTORNEY FOR APPELLEE: ELLIS TURNAGE
NATURE OF THE CASE: CIVIL - MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
DISPOSITION: REVERSED AND RENDERED - 12/17/2019
MOTION FOR REHEARING FILED:
MANDATE ISSUED:
BEFORE BARNES, C.J., GREENLEE AND LAWRENCE, JJ.
BARNES, C.J., FOR THE COURT:
¶1. A Bolivar County Circuit Court jury found Cleveland Medical Clinic PLLC (CMC)
liable for the wrongful death of Gene Easley (Gene) and awarded his estate (Easley)
$744,042.25 in damages. After the circuit court denied CMC’s motion for a judgment
notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV), CMC appealed raising issues about the admissibility
of testimony by Easley’s expert witness. Due to Easley’s failure to file an appellee’s brief
and the voluminous and complicated record on appeal, we consider the merits of CMC’s
claims to determine if an apparent case of error exists. Finding the expert testimony was
insufficient to support the verdict, we reverse and render the judgment.
FACTUAL SUMMARY
¶2. On December 30, 2007, Gene—a fifty-six year old male—was admitted to Bolivar
Medical Center (BMC) by Dr. James Warrington, his physician of ten years who was
employed by CMC. Gene’s complaints were shortness of breath, malaise, weakness, and
black, tarry bowel movements. As noted in CMC’s brief, Gene “had a complicated medical
history.” Among his prior medical issues, he had (1) a stroke; (2) diverticulitis; (3) bilateral
below-knee amputation due to gangrene; (4) congestive heart failure; and (5) high blood
pressure. Gene also had end-stage renal failure and was a dialysis patient of Dr. Michael
Portner, a nephrologist with Renal Care Group.
¶3. Upon admission, Dr. Warrington ordered the typing and cross-matching of blood
products and periodically ordered blood transfusions. Dr. Portner was consulted and
diagnosed Gene with anemia related to his underlying renal condition. Dr. Bennie Wright,
a surgeon, performed an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) to determine the source of
Gene’s bleeding. Dr. Wright identified the presence of gastric ulcers but found no active
bleeding. All three doctors continued to monitor Gene’s progress, with Dr. Warrington
responding to any changes and ordering more blood transfusions and lab tests.
¶4. On the morning of January 9, 2008, Dr. Warrington conducted rounds at BMC and
noted in Gene’s patient chart that he was “doing well” and would be discharged after
receiving dialysis that morning. Gene began hemodialysis at 8:20 a.m. under Dr. Portner’s
care. He was given heparin, a blood-thinner, and his blood pressure was 141/69. However,
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at 10:15 a.m., Gene had a large bloody stool; so Dr. Portner cancelled Gene’s scheduled
discharge from the hospital, and he was taken back to his hospital room at 11:20 a.m. In the
meantime, Gene had three more bloody stools.
¶5. At 12:09 p.m., Dr Warrington was en route from Cleveland to Clarksdale to see
patients when he was informed by BMC of Gene’s bloody stools. He gave a telephone order
for the BMC nursing staff to type and cross-match blood and to call Dr. Wright, who ordered
a transfusion of one unit of blood and for staff to call him if Gene’s hematocrit got below
26.1 The blood transfusion was started at 2:15 p.m. Shortly thereafter, BMC contacted Dr.
Warrington to tell him that Gene was complaining of pain; so the doctor ordered a low dose
of Demerol at 3:00 p.m. At 3:15 p.m., Gene’s blood pressure was 79/49. Thirty minutes
later, his blood pressure dropped to 49/29; so BMC called Dr. Warrington to provide a status
update. He told BMC to contact his partner, Dr. Kimberly Webb, who was at BMC
conducting rounds in his absence.
¶6. When Dr. Webb arrived a few moments later, Gene was going into respiratory arrest
(a “code blue”). He was resuscitated and transferred to BMC’s intensive care unit (ICU).
Dr. Webb issued an order to type and cross-match four units of blood and transfuse at 4:20
p.m, and she examined Gene at 6:00 p.m. However, a short while later, Gene went into
respiratory arrest again, and he died at 8:08 p.m. The cause of death was respiratory failure
secondary to an alleged gastrointestinal (GI) bleed and end-stage renal disease.
1
According to the record, a hematocrit reading is a measurement of a person’s blood
count. A normal count is about 40. Gene’s hematocrit when he was admitted was 22. On
the morning of January 9, it had improved to 29.
3
PROCEDURAL HISTORY
¶7. On March 10, 2010, Jessie Easley, the administrator of Gene’s estate, filed a
complaint with the circuit court against PHC-Cleveland d/b/a BMC, CMC, Renal Care
Group, and Dr. Portner. The complaint alleged a wrongful-death claim caused by healthcare-
provider negligence and sought “monetary damages for defendants’ joint and combined
negligent acts.”2
¶8. CMC filed a motion for summary judgment on March 2, 2012, asserting that Easley’s
expert witness, Dr. Carl Blond, failed to provide expert medical testimony establishing that
CMC “was negligent in the examination, care and treatment of [Gene], and that negligen[ce]
was the proximate cause or proximate contributing cause of his death.” Finding Dr. Blond’s
affidavit “create[d] a genuine issue of material fact as to the causal connection between the
treatment rendered and Easley’s death,” the circuit court denied the motion on December 19,
2013. On August 21, 2017, CMC filed a motion to exclude Dr. Blond as an expert witness,
which the court also denied.
¶9. A jury trial was held September 11-14, 2017. The circuit court admitted Dr. Blond
as an expert in internal medicine, in nephrology, and as a hospitalist. Dr. Blond opined that
when Dr. Warrington first became aware of Gene’s bloody stools at 12:09 p.m., he or Dr.
Webb should have personally assessed the patient, transferred Gene to the ICU, and
2
BMC, Renal Care Group, and Dr. Portner are not parties to this appeal. Easley
voluntarily dismissed all claims against Renal Care Group, and the circuit court granted Dr.
Portner’s motion for summary judgment on December 10, 2015. On July 7, 2017, BMC
filed a motion for partial summary judgment, which the circuit court granted. Subsequently,
at trial, the court granted BMC’s motion for a directed verdict, finding Easley’s expert
witness failed to establish a standard of care for the BMC employees.
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consulted an endoscopic doctor to find the active GI bleed. On cross-examination, Dr. Blond
conceded that when Gene was admitted on December 30, Dr. Warrington appropriately
referred him to the surgeon, Dr. Wright, and that Gene’s blood counts on the morning of his
death had improved since his admission days earlier.
¶10. After the plaintiff rested, CMC moved for a directed verdict and renewed its motion
to exclude Dr. Blond’s testimony. The court denied the motions. Dr. Warrington testified
that he visited Gene during his morning rounds, and his impression of Gene’s condition was
“[t]hat everything was good.” He was not notified of Gene’s deteriorating condition (i.e., his
blood pressure of 49/29) until 3:47 p.m., at which time he told BMC staff to contact Dr.
Webb, who was at the hospital. When asked by counsel if there was “anything more that [he
or the other physicians] could have done to keep [Gene] alive,” he replied, “No, sir.” On
cross-examination, Dr. Warrington explained that he initially told BMC to call Dr. Wright
to look at the patient, rather than Dr. Webb, because Dr. Wright “was in the hospital” and
was “the most qualified person to take care of [Gene’s] problem at that moment.”
¶11. Dr. Robert Boyd, CMC’s expert witness in the field of surgery and managed care in
a hospital setting, opined that Dr. Warrington’s actions after being informed of the bloody
stool—consulting Dr. Wright and Dr. Webb—were the appropriate standards of care. Dr.
Diedre Phillips, an expert witness in family medicine and in the coordination of medical care
by a family medicine physician in a hospital, further testified that the standard of care did not
require Dr. Warrington to transfer Gene to the ICU when notified of the bloody stools, noting
that Gene’s blood pressure was stable at that time and that there was no “indication he was
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actively bleeding.”
¶12. The jury rendered a verdict against CMC and awarded damages of $744,042.25, and
the circuit court entered a final judgment on September 25, 2017. CMC filed a motion for
a JNOV or a new trial, which the court denied on December 8, 2017. Because CMC did not
receive notice of the court’s order until February 2018, it filed a motion for relief from the
judgment under Mississippi Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). The court granted the CMC’s
motion for the relief, vacated its December 8, 2017 order, and issued a new order on
February 12, 2018, denying the motion for a JNOV or a new trial and granting a remittitur
to $500,000 in accordance with Mississippi Code Annotated section 11-1-60 (Rev. 2014).3
¶13. CMC appealed the judgment and, on January 31, 2019, filed its appellant’s brief. On
April 9, 2019, Easley’s attorney, Ellis Turnage, filed a motion requesting additional time to
file the appellee’s brief, which had been due on March 2, 2019. Turnage claimed his staff
had been instructed to file the motion for additional time on March 2, but unbeknownst to
him, they failed to do so. CMC opposed the motion, seeking relief under Mississippi Rule
of Appellate Procedure 31(d), “including (but not limited to) the denial of oral argument to
Appellee.” The Mississippi Supreme Court denied the motion for additional time, finding
counsel’s reasons for failing to file the appellee’s brief to be “inadequate.” CMC’s request
for relief under Rule 31(d) was dismissed as “premature.” Easley has since filed a motion
requesting permission to participate in oral argument pursuant to Rule 31(d). There was no
proper request for oral argument by either party. Under Mississippi Rule of Appellate
3
The judgment has been stayed pending the appeal.
6
Procedure 34(b), an appellee shall mark “oral argument requested” on his principal brief, and
the appellant “shall make this notation on his reply brief or, if no reply brief is filed, by letter
within the time allowed for filing of the reply brief.” As the supreme court denied Easley’s
request to file an untimely brief, and no reply brief or letter requesting oral argument was
filed by CMC, we did not grant oral argument in this case. Easley’s motion is hereby denied
as moot.
¶14. CMC appeals the circuit court’s denial of its pre- and post-trial motions—the motion
to exclude Dr. Blond’s testimony, the motion for summary judgment, and the motion for a
JNOV—on the basis that Dr. Blond’s testimony was speculative and insufficient to support
the verdict. Before considering the merits of the appeal, we must address the appellee’s
failure to file a brief. As the reviewing court, we have two options. The first option is to
“take the appellee’s failure to file a brief as a confession of error and reverse.” Griffith v.
Wall, 224 So. 3d 1293, 1295 (¶8) (Miss. Ct. App. 2017) (quoting McGrew v McGrew, 184
So. 3d 302, 306 (¶10) (Miss. Ct. App. 2015)). “This should be done when the record is
complicated or voluminous, and the appellant has presented an apparent case of error.” Id.
at 1296 (¶8). However, in “situations where there is a sound and unmistakable basis upon
which the judgment may be safely affirmed,” the second option “is to disregard the
appellee’s failure to file a brief and affirm the judgment.” Id. Considering the parties’
numerous court filings, medical records, and four days of trial testimony, it is evident to this
Court that the record is complicated and voluminous, comprising twelve volumes.
Accordingly, we will review CMC’s claims to determine if there is “an apparent case of
7
error.”
DISCUSSION
¶15. In both his original and supplemental affidavits, Dr. Blond stated that Gene “would
have survived if he had received blood and fluids on a STAT basis and had been promptly
transferred to ICU” after the occurrence of the bloody stools. Arguing that his testimony was
“unreliable and based upon speculation and conjecture,” CMC filed a motion to exclude Dr.
Blond as an expert witness, along with its motion for summary judgment. The circuit court
denied the motions and accepted Dr. Blond as an expert witness at trial.
¶16. On direct examination, Dr. Blond testified that CMC employees, Drs. Warrington and
Webb, violated the national standard of care by failing “to transfer [Gene] to an ICU setting
for careful monitoring” and failing “to directly speak with an endoscopist to explain that this
patient has had a major change in status and is passing bloody stools.” He said that when
treating an acute, active GI bleed:
[A] patient, has to be, number one, put in an ICU to be monitored closely;
number two; aggressive care, generally. When someone has GI bleeding
that’s significant, your goal is, first, to resuscitate them with blood and fluids,
and then, if you believe, it’s an upper GI hemorrhage, you proceed with
emergent endoscopy to find out where they’re bleeding from, and, hopefully,
be able to correct the bleeding or stop the bleeding that’s going on, and that’s
done by someone who does endoscopy. So the first step is close monitoring,
and the second step is to proceed with an aggressive workup in an attempt to
stop the bleeding.
(Emphasis added). Yet when asked on cross-examination what would have happened had
Gene been transferred to the ICU at 12:09 p.m., Dr. Blond admitted that he was not certain.
Q. Now, if [Gene] had been in the ICU, isn’t it true that the blood
pressures that we’ve just gone over -- the blood pressure that we read
8
right before we began to see any blood -- would have been the same
blood pressure that -- I mean, because it’s in the ICU doesn’t change
what the blood pressure would have been. It would have been the
same.
A. I think that’s speculation.
Q. Do you? And I think so too. In fact, you can’t tell this [c]ourt and this
jury what would have happened if he had been transferred to the ICU
at 12:09, can you?
A. I can tell you what could happen, but I can’t tell you what would
happen.
¶17. After the plaintiff rested its case, CMC’s attorney renewed the motion to exclude Dr.
Blond’s expert testimony, or alternatively, to strike his testimony that Gene should have been
transferred to the ICU for monitoring after the bloody stools were reported, citing The
University of Mississippi Medical Center v. Littleton, 213 So. 3d 525 (Miss. Ct. App. 2016).
In Littleton, Dr. David Wiggins provided medical expert testimony at trial that the cause of
death for the deceased was a lack of monitoring and that the attending physicians breached
the standard of care by not transferring the patient to the ICU. Id. at 531 (¶13). The trial
court found the medical center liable and awarded damages to the plaintiff. Id. at 534 (¶24).
This Court reversed and rendered the judgment, holding:
Dr. Wiggins testified that if Cleopatra had been in the ICU, those physicians
and nurses would have noticed [her] declining condition, because she would
have been more carefully monitored, and would have been provided treatment
to prevent her death. However, he did not specify the exact nature of her
declining condition, or the exact treatment the ICU could have provided to
save her life, besides “monitoring.” He also did not state what type of
specialists would have been called in to treat Cleopatra in the ICU.
....
9
Treatment in the ICU does not guarantee survival; it was mere speculation that
ICU care would have changed Cleopatra’s outcome, much less increased her
probability of survival beyond fifty percent.
We find the trial court abused its discretion in relying upon Dr. Wiggins’s
speculative testimony in order to find UMMC liable for Cleopatra’s death. Dr.
Wiggins claimed that admitting Cleopatra to the ICU would have saved her
life from an unknown cause of death. Yet he offered no specifics on the
treatment that she would have received, and how monitoring would have saved
her life.
Id. at 538-59 (¶¶36-39). The circuit court acknowledged that under Littleton, it would not
be sufficient for Dr. Blond to simply state that “the standard of care is to refer him to the ICU
and that it would have been a different result.” However, in denying both CMC’s motion to
exclude the witness’s testimony and motion for a directed verdict, the judge reasoned:
I think it was one or two questions that Mr. Turnage asked. In a motion for a
directed verdict, if I take all of the evidence most favorable to the plaintiff,
I’ve got to look at those one or two questions, which is going to be looked at
on appeal. Yes, you [(CMC)] had Dr. Blond eating out of your hand. I mean,
he agreed with everything you said. But that is in direct conflict with the one
or two questions that were directly on point that Mr. Turnage asked.
Those questions involved Mr. Turnage’s asking Dr. Blond to provide the standard of care for
a GI bleed. Dr. Blond responded:
And so you really have to get after your doctor who does the endoscopy to be
there on the scene. What you want to do is stabilize the patient, monitor them
in the ICU, get the blood pressure up, and get someone down to do the
endoscopy as soon as possible.
¶18. “The standard of review for the admission or suppression of evidence, including
expert testimony, is an abuse of discretion.” Utz v. Running & Rolling Trucking Inc., 32 So.
3d 450, 457 (¶8) (Miss. 2010). In Mississippi Transportation Commission v. McLemore, 863
So. 2d 31, 35 (¶5) (Miss. 2003), the Mississippi Supreme Court adopted a test to determine
10
the admissibility of expert witness testimony as stated in Daubert v. Merrell Dow
Pharmaceuticals Inc., 509 U.S. 579 (1993), and as modified in Kumho Tire Co. v.
Carmichael, 526 U.S. 137 (1999). Under the modified Daubert standard, the trial court must
“perform a two-pronged inquiry”—is the testimony relevant, and is it reliable? McLemore,
863 So. 2d at 38 (¶16). An expert witness’s opinion cannot be mere speculation but must be
based “on the methods and procedures of science.” Id. at 36 (¶11). “[N]othing is absolutely
certain in the field of medicine, but the intent of the law is that if a physician cannot form an
opinion with sufficient certainty so as to make a medical judgment, neither can a jury use that
information to reach a decision.” Univ. of Miss. Med. Ctr. v. Lanier, 97 So. 3d 1197, 1203
(¶22) (Miss. 2012) (quoting Catchings v. State, 684 So. 2d 591, 597 (Miss. 1996)).
¶19. CMC urges us to find that the circuit court erred in denying its motion for summary
judgment. This Court has held that “appeals from the denial of a motion for summary
judgment are interlocutory in nature and are rendered moot by a trial on the merits.”
Franklin Collection Servs. Inc. v. Collins, 206 So. 3d 1282, 1284 (¶8) (Miss. Ct. App. 2016).
Therefore, because a trial on the merits was held, the court’s ruling on CMC’s summary-
judgment motion “is not reviewable on appeal and . . . is not a basis for reversal.” Id. at 1285
(¶10).
¶20. We agree with CMC that Dr. Blond’s expert testimony failed to establish that Dr.
Warrington’s negligence proximately caused Gene’s death and that the court erred in denying
its motion for a JNOV. In order to demonstrate a prima facie case of medical negligence, the
plaintiff must prove:
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(1) the defendant had a duty to conform to a specific standard of conduct for
the protection of others against an unreasonable risk of injury; (2) the
defendant failed to conform to that required standard; (3) the defendant’s
breach of duty was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injury; and (4) the
plaintiff was injured as a result.
Harper v. Hudspeth Reg’l Ctr., 270 So. 3d 239, 244 (¶20) (Miss. Ct. App. 2018) (quoting
Glenn v. Peoples, 185 So. 3d 981, 985 (¶11) (Miss. 2015)). To prove medical negligence,
the expert testimony must establish that the defendant’s failure to conform to the required
standard of care “was the proximate cause, or proximate contributing cause, of the alleged
injuries.” McDonald v. Mem’l Hosp. at Gulfport, 8 So. 3d 175, 180 (¶12) (Miss. 2009). If
the “plaintiff fails to produce sufficient admissible evidence to establish a prima facie case,
a [JNOV] is appropriate.” Littleton, 213 So. 3d at 536 (¶29) (citing Cleveland v. Hamil, 119
So. 3d 1020, 1024 (¶14) (Miss. 2013)).
¶21. As noted by the circuit court, the expert’s merely stating that Gene would have
survived had he been transferred to the ICU sooner would have been speculative as discussed
in Littleton. But unlike the expert in Littleton, Dr. Blond also opined that a specialist should
have been consulted to treat the GI bleed and provided specifics on treatment. The evidence
was undisputed that when Dr. Warrington became aware of the bloody stools at 12:09 p.m.,
he had BMC staff promptly consult with Dr. Wright, the surgeon who had performed Gene’s
EGD a few days earlier—a fact both dissenting opinions completely disregard. As Dr.
Warrington testified, Dr. Wright was “the most qualified person to take care of [Gene’s]
problem at that moment.” Dr. Wright promptly responded and assessed Gene’s condition,
ordering more blood. Dr. Blond acknowledged as much on cross-examination:
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Q. Well, there’s really nothing we’ve identified that Dr. Warrington could
have done from where he was, other than what he did, and that is to
include and associate and involve a surgeon. There’s already a
nephrologist on board, and they are managing this patient with blood
products, and they are making decisions based on the patient’s care
having been coordinated by Dr. Warrington; is that right?
A. That’s correct.
And as already discussed, testimony that the failure to transfer a patient to ICU for
monitoring, standing alone, is insufficient to establish negligence.
¶22. Having reviewed the expert testimony in this case, we find that the evidence was not
sufficient to establish causation and that the circuit court erred in denying the motion for a
JNOV. Accordingly, we reverse and render the judgment.
¶23. REVERSED AND RENDERED.
CARLTON AND J. WILSON, P.JJ., GREENLEE, TINDELL, LAWRENCE
AND C. WILSON, JJ., CONCUR. WESTBROOKS, J., DISSENTS WITHOUT
SEPARATE WRITTEN OPINION. McDONALD, J., DISSENTS WITH SEPARATE
WRITTEN OPINION, JOINED BY WESTBROOKS AND McCARTY, JJ.
McCARTY, J., DISSENTS WITH SEPARATE WRITTEN OPINION, JOINED BY
WESTBROOKS AND McDONALD, JJ.
McDONALD, J., DISSENTING:
¶24. The majority reverses the jury’s verdict after holding that Easley did not sufficiently
prove causation. The jury found: “We the jurors by a vote of 12 to 0 find that Mr. Easley’s
death was proximately caused or contributed to by Dr. Warrington of Cleveland Medical
Clinic due to medical negligence to the care of Gene Autrey Easley.”
¶25. The majority correctly acknowledges that “nothing is absolutely certain in medicine.”
Univ. of Miss. Med. Ctr. v. Lanier, 97 So. 3d 1197, 1203 (¶22) (Miss. 2012) (quoting
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Catchings v. State, 684 So. 2d 591, 597 (Miss. 1996)). Our Supreme Court recently
reiterated that the plaintiff is not required to prove causation with certainty. Norman v.
Anderson, 262 So. 3d 520, 524 (¶13) (Miss. 2019). However, the majority held that Dr.
Blond’s testimony failed to establish that Dr. Warrington’s negligence caused Gene’s death
and, therefore, the court erred in denying CMC’s motion for a JNOV. The Supreme Court
held the following in Estate of Gibson v. Magnolia Healthcare Inc. 91 So. 3d 616, 625 (¶22)
(Miss. 2012):
Generally, expert testimony is needed in a medical malpractice case to prove
that a breach of the standard of care caused or contributed to the alleged injury.
However, a medical expert does not have to testify with “absolute certainty,”
but testimony, taken as a whole, must establish “reasonable medical certainty”
that the negligence caused the injuries at issue. Additionally, negligence and
causation may be established by circumstantial evidence, “but this rule is
qualified to the extent that the circumstances shown must be such as to take the
case out of the realm of conjecture and place it within the field of legitimate
inference.” “Verdicts must rest upon reasonable probabilities and not upon
mere possibilities.” This Court has ruled that “only in rare and exceptional
cases” should the court take such a case from the jury.
(Citation omitted).
¶26. In this case, I believe that causation was established by the following direct and
circumstantial evidence: Dr. Blond, Appellee’s expert, testified extensively about the
standard of care needed to treat a gastric bleed. The following exchange occurred during his
direct examination:
Q. Okay. Dr. Blond, in your opinion, based upon a reasonable degree of
medical probability, what did the nationwide standard of care for a GI
bleed objectively require Dr. Warrington to do in this patient?
A. With acute, active bleeding that’s potentially with large amounts of
blood, a patient has to be, number one, put in an ICU to be monitored
14
closely; number two, aggressive care, generally. When someone has GI
bleeding that’s significant, your goal is, first, to resuscitate [him] with
blood and fluids, and then, if you believe it’s an upper GI hemorrhage,
you proceed with emergency endoscopy to find out where they’re
bleeding from, and, hopefully, be able to correct the bleeding or stop
the bleeding that’s going on, and that’s done by someone who does
endoscopy. So the first step is close monitoring, and the second step is
to proceed with an aggressive workup in an attempt to stop the
bleeding.
....
Q. All right. Dr. Blond, in your opinion, based upon a reasonable degree
of medical probability, did Dr. James Warrington and Dr. Kim Webb
deviate from the nationwide standard of care for admitting a patient
with a GI bleed?
A. On the last day, yes, sir.
....
A. When you have a large, bloody stool, that suggests a very large bleed,
and that means that there’s been a major change in their status. And so
you really have to get after your doctor who does the endoscopy to be
there on the scene. What you want to do is stabilize the patient,
monitor [him] in ICU, get the blood pressure up, and get someone
down to the endoscopy as soon as possible.
Q. Okay. Dr. Blond, would you explain to the jury your opinion, based on
a reasonable degree of medical probability, of what the nationwide
standard of care required Dr. Warrington to do to find the GI bleed.
A. Again, to find the bleed would be by endoscopist. If there’s not an
endoscopist present, you really can’t find the bleed.
¶27. It is undisputed that Dr. Warrington, Gene’s admitting physician, found out at 12:09
p.m. about the bleed that Dr. Blond characterized as a “massive gastrointestinal hemorrhage,”
and he failed to assess Gene during this time. Dr. Warrington also admitted that Gene had
a gastric blood leak that no one found and no one fixed, even though CMC had the
15
equipment to do both. According to Dr. Blond, based upon a reasonable degree of medical
probability, Gene’s death was caused by “[a] gastrointestinal bleed.”
¶28. It is undisputed that the doctors at the CMC did not personally assess Gene between
12:09 p.m., when Dr. Warrington was notified of the bloody stools, and Gene first coded at
3:55 p.m. Dr. Warrington testified:
Q. And at 3:55, the code blue is going off then; right?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And, certainly, if a physician - - if Dr. Webb had assessed the patient,
under the standard of care notes; right?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And so it would be reasonable to infer, since this is the only progress
note that was written, that even though Dr. Kim Webb was in the
hospital, she never assessed the patient; right.
....
Q. And that doesn’t say that she [Dr. Webb] assessed the patient - - Mr.
Easley - - before he coded, does it?
A. Not before he coded. I thought you had asked did she write a note, and
I knew there was a note in there for that day.
....
Q. . . . Dr. Webb had assessed him after the first code blue; right?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And that was at [4:00 p.m.]?
A. Yes.
Q. So from 12:09 to [4:00 p.m.], that would be right at four hours or about
16
nine minutes short of being four hours.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you agree, then, that the chart indicates that no one on the medical
staff at CMC came to Bolivar Medical Center to personally assess Mr.
Easley during that time period; right?
A. There’s none that’s reflected in that note, sir.
¶29. Based upon the foregoing, the jury had ample evidence to conclude that “Mr. Easley’s
death was proximately caused or contributed to by Dr. Warrington of Cleveland Medical
Clinic.” “When the jury has returned a verdict in a civil case, we are not at liberty to direct
that judgment be entered contrary to that verdict short of a conclusion on our part that, given
the evidence as a whole, taken in the light most favorable to the verdict, no reasonable,
hypothetical juror could have found as the jury found.” Busick v. St. John, 856 So. 2d 304,
307 (¶7) (Miss. 2003). Causation is generally to be determined by the jury. Id. With regard
to the sufficiency of the evidence, “this court will consider the evidence in the light most
favorable to the appellee, giving that party the benefit of all favorable inference that may be
reasonably drawn from the evidence.” Spotlite Skating Rink Inc. v. Barnes, 988 So. 2d 364,
368 (¶10) (Miss. 2008). “A jury’s verdict is given great deference by this Court, and
conflicts of evidence presented at trial are to be resolved by the jury.” Johnson v. St.
Dominics-Jackson Mem’l Hosp., 967 So. 2d 20, 23 (¶10) (Miss. 2007) (internal quotation
marks omitted). The expert testimony of Dr. Blond regarding causation was sufficient to
sustain the jury verdict. It is obvious to doctors and lay persons alike that if a massive GI
bleed is not repaired, a patient will die. In my opinion, a reasonable juror could find, as did
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this jury, that the failure to assess Gene’s GI bleed for over four hours proximately caused
or contributed to his death.
¶30. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
WESTBROOKS AND McCARTY, JJ., JOIN THIS OPINION.
McCARTY, J., DISSENTING:
¶31. In addition to disregarding the literally handwritten finding of the jury as to proximate
cause, I believe we continue to raise the standard of proof in medical malpractice actions.
This is exemplified by the majority’s crucial reliance on a recent case from our Court, upon
which the reversal and render is built. Univ. of Miss. Med. Ctr. v. Littleton, 213 So. 3d 525,
538-39 (¶¶38-39) (Miss. Ct. App. 2016).
¶32. Our Supreme Court has ruled that “[i]n cases alleging that death was caused by the
negligence of a health care provider, proximate cause must be established by a medical
doctor.” Mariner Health Care Inc. v. Estate of Edwards ex rel. Turner, 964 So. 2d 1138,
1144 (¶8) (Miss. 2007). Critically, in Mariner the Supreme Court ruled that it “does not
require that expert testimony conclusively establish the cause of death.” Id. (emphasis
added). It is only that “expert testimony must, at a minimum, show that deviations from the
standard of nursing care caused or contributed to the decedent’s death.” Id. (emphasis
added).
¶33. Mariner then crafts a clear rule: an expert does not have to testify with certainty about
the cause of death, but an expert can establish proximate cause through showing deviations
of the standard of care that caused or contributed to the death. The rest is for the jury to
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determine.
¶34. Yet in Littleton, this Court raised the bar beyond this modest and practical standard,
and decided there should be more certainty from experts, even when the expert “agreed that
the exact cause or mechanism of [the patient’s] death was unknown . . . .” Littleton, 213So.
3d at 537 (¶34). As a result, we ruled that “since he [the plaintiff’s expert] could not identify
which possible complication of meningitis caused [the patient’s] heart to stop, his opinion
that the ICU would have saved her life is mere speculation and insufficient to establish
causation.” Id. This is beyond what the Supreme Court set out in Mariner, and therefore
Littleton raised the bar beyond what has been long required to meet the standard of proof.
Under the majority’s formulation in this case, experts have to know what caused
death—despite the fact that the Supreme Court “does not require that expert testimony
conclusively establish the cause of death.” Mariner, 964 So. 2d at 1144 (¶8) (emphasis
added).
¶35. To create a standard in contravention of Supreme Court precedent is beyond our
power in the first place, but we also then create an impossible hurdle for those seeking to
establish causation. It is the rare expert indeed who will be able to testify that she knows
conclusively what happened and what caused someone’s death. Human bodies and medical
care are not so easily deciphered, and our precedent has allowed for that uncertainty–and for
a jury of the defendants’ peers to resolve the dispute in accord with our Constitution.
¶36. As the majority points out, we did not have a properly filed request for oral argument.
We must take the procedures and deadlines established by our Rules of Appellate Procedure
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seriously. We rule today, however, without the benefit of a response brief from the Easley
family. Given that this appeal involves the death of a Mississippian and the jury rendered
a verdict in favor of his family, I would have preferred having their input through
supplemental briefing or oral argument before we issue this decision.
¶37. For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.
WESTBROOKS AND McDONALD, JJ., JOIN THIS OPINION.
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