Question: What Could Happen If You Miss The Date For A Medical Malpractice Submission?
Answer: Dismissal of the Claim and Legal Malpractice!
In 2007, Evelyn Holmes died after suffering complications from a medical condition. Ladonna Reck filed a proposed complaint alleging that Holmes’s complications and resulting death were caused by the medical malpractice as the personal representative for Evelyn’s estate. Approximately 2.5 years after Reck filed her proposed complaint, a medical review panel was formed and deadlines for the parties’ submissions were set. Reck, however, did not comply with these deadlines or file any submissions before the medical review panel’s statutorily-imposed deadline for issuing its expert opinion had passed. In response, Defendants filed a motion requesting the dismissal of Reck’s proposed complaint with prejudice. Nearly 7 months after her submissions were originally due, nearly 3 months after the 180–day statutory deadline for the medical review panel to issue its expert opinion had passed, and just 2 days before the scheduled hearing on the motion to dismiss, Reck provided a copy of her submissions. Reck also filed a response to the motion to dismiss in which she apologized for the late filing of her submissions and indicated that her submissions were late because it took a great deal of time for her counsel to review all of the voluminous medical records covering complex issues and to prepare her submissions. Reck brings this appeal from the trial court’s dismissal of Reek’s proposed complaint.
On appeal, the Court first noted that before a party brings a medical malpractice action in an Indiana court, the Act requires that the proposed complaint be presented to a medical review panel and that the panel render an opinion. The Act provides the chairman of the medical review panel with various powers, including the responsibility to establish a reasonable schedule for submission of evidence to the medical review panel. The Act provides that once a medical review panel is formed, the panel shall give its expert opinion within 180 days after the selection of the last member of the panel. Implicit in these provisions is the corresponding duty upon the parties to comply with the schedule, if one is set by the chair, and upon the parties and the panel to comply with the 180 day limit; an available remedy for any breach is court-ordered sanctions. Necessarily, the initial burden falls upon the party submitting the proposed complaint. Without evidence from the complainant in support of the proposed complaint the review panel is unable to express its expert opinion as to whether or not the evidence supports the conclusion that the defendant or defendants acted or failed to act within the appropriate standards of care as charged in the complaint. Only when the complainant’s evidence is submitted is the defendant in the proposed complaint compelled to come forward with evidence in response to the complainant’s evidence.
After reviewing the facts noted above, the Court of Appeals noted that Reck claimed the trial court abused its discretion in dismissing her proposed complaint because Reck demonstrated good cause for delay and the defendants were not prejudiced by the failure. Specifically, Reck claims that she presented testimony demonstrating that the medical records were voluminous and complicated, that her failure to timely file her submissions was not intentional or contumacious, and that the parties agreed that Reck should have an extended period of time to file her submissions. However, it is well-settled that the Act specifically provides the trial court with the authority to impose appropriate sanctions, including dismissal of a proposed complaint, upon a party who, without good cause shown, fails to act in the manner required by the Act. It is undisputed that Reck failed to act in a manner required by the Act, i.e., to timely file her submissions. Thus, in light of our conclusion that Reck failed to demonstrate good cause for her failure to timely file her submissions, we conclude that the trial court acted within its discretion in dismissing Reck’s proposed complaint with prejudice. 993 N.E.2d 627