CHARLESTON — The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals ruled that a medical claim involving an ambulance that wrecked falls under the Medical Professional Liability Act and because of that, it is required to follow pre-suit notification.
In a 3-2 decision, the Supreme Court also found that a circuit court is deprived of subject matter jurisdiction when a person fails to comply with the pre-suit notice requirements, meaning that the circuit court didn't err in dismissing the case over subject matter jurisdiction, according to the May 20 opinion.
The appeal involved Crystal Brown, an emergency medical technician employed by Tri-State Ambulance who wrecked while transporting a patient to a hospital in Columbus, Ohio, due to adverse weather conditions on Dec. 16, 2016.
In the wreck, the patient and another employee of Tri-State Ambulance died. Brown and Tri-State then filed a lawsuit on Dec. 17, 2018, alleging negligence, carelessness and/or recklessness against Ohio Valley Health Services & Education, Ohio Valley Medical Center, Alecto Healthcare Services Ohio Valley and several unknown and unnamed individuals and entities.
"In support of their negligence claim, petitioners alleged that OVMC knew but failed to disclose that transporting the patient was not medically necessary to save his life and that dangerous weather conditions were approaching," the opinion states. "This failure to disclose deprived Petitioner Brown of the information necessary to determine whether the trip should have been made that night."
The respondents filed an answer and served discovery in the case, but then moved to dismiss the complaint. They argued that the case should be dismissed because the claims were governed by the MPLA and that because of that, the petitioners should have complied with the pre-suit notice requirements of the act.
The circuit court granted the motion to dismiss and found they should have complied with MPLA's pre-suit notice requirements and that failure to do so deprived the court of subject matter jurisdiction. The petitioners then appealed to the Supreme Court.
"Because petitioners failed to comply with those pre-suit notice requirements, the circuit court did not err in dismissing their complaint for want of subject matter jurisdiction," the Supreme Court ruled.
Justices John Hutchison and Bill Wooton disagreed.
"I dissent to the majority’s resolution of this case," Hutchison wrote. "I would have set this case for oral argument to thoroughly address the error alleged in this appeal."
Hutchison believed the case deserved a formal opinion.
In his dissent, Wooton wrote that the majority's decision in the case goes beyond anything in the Supreme Court's precedents.
"Petitioners in this case were not patients, and their injuries and damages were not 'caused by the health care provider’s negligent treatment of a tortfeasor patient[,]' as in Osborne," Wooton wrote. "If this Court is going to extend blanket immunity to health care practitioners for harm caused in any way to anyone—and make no mistake, this is the practical effect of today’s decision—we should do it in a signed opinion setting forth a rationale which supports such a radical extension of the Medical Professional Liability Act."
West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals case number: 20-0156