Medical malpractice; Kalaj v Khan; Proximate cause; Taylor v Kent Radiology; Expert testimony; MCL 600.2955; MRE 702; “Differential diagnosis”

The court held that the trial court did not err by granting summary disposition for defendants-doctor and medical practice because plaintiff failed to show that defendant-Dr. Burgess caused his injuries. Plaintiff sued defendants claiming Burgess committed medical malpractice when he failed to order an abdominal x-ray in time to avoid further complications. The trial court granted summary disposition for defendants. On appeal, the court found that plaintiff failed to show proximate cause, noting he “failed to provide adequate expert testimony to establish that the alleged failure of” Burgess to investigate him further was the cause in fact of his eventual harm. “Plaintiff’s complaint listed various alleged breaches by” Dr. Burgess of the standard of care. These allegations all essentially contended that he “should have known to investigate further and order an abdominal x-ray on the basis of” the 12/22/18 “chest x-ray and failed to ‘[p]roperly and timely diagnose bowel intussusception on 12/22/18 or 12/23/19[.]’” While plaintiff argued “the trial court conflated a decision on whether an intussusception existed with one on when it existed, this argument is a distinction without a difference. Plaintiff’s claim relie[d] on a finding that the intussusception existed on” 12/22/18, or 12/23/18, because Dr. Burgess “cannot have been negligent for failing to identify and treat a condition that did not yet exist.” Plaintiff was “obligated to present sufficient evidence to support the claim that the intussusception existed on” 12/22/18. One of his expert’s “opinion that an intussusception may have been one option among a ‘list of possible conditions’ [was] insufficient to create a genuine issue of fact as to whether the condition did, in fact, exist on the date plaintiff” claimed. More important, this expert “acknowledged she was not aware of ‘any generally accepted methodology that pediatricians can use to take a case of intussusception at the time of diagnosis and reliably pinpoint when the intussusception began[.]’” Because plaintiff’s “experts failed to provide any scientifically-based evidence supporting their conclusions that” plaintiff had an intussusception on 12/22/18, “plaintiff failed to establish a genuine issue of material fact that” Dr. Burgess’s conduct was the proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries, and the trial court properly dismissed his case. Affirmed.