eNotes: Liability – June 2023 – Virginia

SIGNIFICANT CASE SUMMARIES

Virginia Case Summary

Norman v. Leonard’s Express, Inc.
United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia
No. 7:22cv00096

Decided: April 21, 2023

Court excludes life care expert report because it impermissibly rendered medical opinions.

Background

Plaintiff, Yvette Norman, was involved in a serious motor vehicle collision with Julian Kaczor, who was operating a semi-truck owned by the Defendant, Leonard’s Express. Both Norman and Leonard’s Express had planned to have an expert present a life care plan to forecast the cost of Norman’s future care needs as a result of the collision. Leonard’s Express hired Shelby Dubato, who spent most of her report rebutting and challenging Norman’s expert’s calculated projection for Norman’s future care needs. Norman contended that Dubato was not qualified to render an expert opinion about the future necessity of medical and surgical treatment, therapeutic treatment and prescription medication because Dubato is not a licensed medical doctor. Norman further argues that the endorsement by a qualified medical expert was expressly conditioned and that a full endorsement was never obtained, which meant the report should be excluded at trial.

Cited case law permits life care planners to flesh out details and costs of future medical needs based on medical diagnoses and opinions of physicians and other qualified healthcare providers, but they may not independently render medical opinions. In her report, Dubato reviewed treatments and said that some were “indicated” as necessary while others were “not indicated.” She thus opined that many of the “not indicated” treatments should not be included in the life care plan, despite medical expert opinion that those treatments were, in fact, necessary.

Holding

The Court held that, although a life care plan does not need to be approved by a physician to be admissible and persuasive, it does need to be predicated upon expert medical opinion regarding medical treatments and therapies. A non-physician life care planner may not independently opine about the necessity of specific medical treatments and procedures because they are outside the scope of expertise. The Court held that, by selecting which medications, treatments, therapies or modalities she believed Norman would require in the future, Dubato rendered medical opinions without sufficient medical grounding or expert support. The Court found that Leonard’s Express had not met its burden of showing that Dubato’s exclusion of certain therapies and treatments were not adequately grounded in the medical expert reports. The entire report was excluded because cutting out all the medical opinions in the report would effectively gut the report.

Questions about this case can be directed to Mackenzie Payne at (571) 470-1906 or mpayne@tthlaw.com.