The Alabama Supreme Court issued its weekly release list on Friday, February 6, which included the following opinion of potential interest to the Alabama business community:
- Keister v. Neurology Consultants: this 5-0 per curiam reversed a trial court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendant in a medical malpractice case. The plaintiff claimed that the defendants negligently failed to follow up on test results indicating that she had multiple sclerosis. The defendants argued that there was insufficient evidence of causation because the plaintiffs’ expert testified that he did not “know specifically” whether the delay in the plaintiff’s diagnosis and treatment led to a worse outcome. The Supreme Court nonetheless held that the plaintiff put forward sufficient evidence that the alleged malpractice had probably caused her harm, reasoning that the expert gave other testimony supporting that inference. The Court found that his statement that he did not “know specifically” that proper care would have led to a better outcome could simply have represented an acknowledgment on his part that he could not be 100% “certain” on that point.
