Commercial Litigation Update

Background

On December 10, 2024, the Supreme Court of Ohio issued its decision in Stull v. Summa, a medical negligence case in which the defendants argued that Ohio’s statutory peer-review privilege protected from discovery the file a hospital maintained on a resident physician, which included, among other things, quality reviews and assessments of the resident’s clinical competency and professional conduct. The Supreme Court of Ohio decided one issue: Does the peer-review privilege in R.C. 2305.252 apply to a healthcare entity’s files concerning resident physicians?

This case arose from the medical treatment of head injuries that the patient sustained during a car crash. The patient and his guardians filed a medical negligence lawsuit against the hospital and its employed healthcare professionals, including a resident physician who participated in the patient’s care. The plaintiffs alleged that the resident improperly intubated the patient, causing the patient to sustain a brain injury

To diminish the number of frivolous lawsuits that patients file against doctors and hospitals, 28 states require that a plaintiff submit an affidavit or certificate of merit when they file a medical malpractice case. The specific requirements vary state-to-state, but generally they require the plaintiff to attach an affidavit from one or more physicians, who must affirm that they reviewed the patient’s medical records; that they believe the defendant-providers breached the applicable standard(s) of care; and that they believe the breach harmed the patient.

In this context, a question often arises: How similar must the affiant’s expertise be to the defendant’s? These requirements also vary state-to-state, but many state statutes and rules of evidence condition an expert witness’s competency to testify – or to complete an adequate affidavit of merit – upon that expert’s credentialling or practicing in a specialty that is similar to the defendant’s. For instance, a New Jersey statute specifies, in relevant part, that if the defendant is:

A new Ohio law substantially changes the landscape for real property tax valuation challenges in the state. In general, it substantially curtails school districts’ rights to initiate and appeal property tax valuation challenges. Governor DeWine signed the bill on April 21, 2022. It will become effective on July 19, 2022, and will affect valuation complaints that relate to tax year 2022 valuations.

When hospitals and doctors treat patients who are injured in car accidents, the health care providers reasonably expect that their rights to be compensated for the care they provide will not be conditioned upon their willingness to participate in their patients’ personal injury lawsuits against allegedly negligent drivers. A common pleas Court in Ohio applied this sensible reasoning in a recent decision, dismissing a car-accident plaintiff’s attempts to force the hospital that treated her to participate in her lawsuit against the driver who allegedly caused the injuries ...