Trimel v. Lawrence & Memorial Hospital Rehabilitation Center

• Decision Date: 16 January 2001
• Docket Number: (AC 19675)
• Citation: 61 Conn. App. 353,764 A.2d 203
• Court: Connecticut Court of Appeals
• Parties: GLORIA TRIMEL v. LAWRENCE AND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL REHABILITATION CENTER ET AL.

61 Conn. App. 353

764 A.2d 203

GLORIA TRIMEL v. LAWRENCE AND MEMORIAL HOSPITAL REHABILITATION CENTER ET AL.

(AC 19675)

Appellate Court of Connecticut.

Argued September 15, 2000.

Officially released January 16, 2001.

Foti, Schaller and Dupont, JS. William F. Gallagher, with whom, on the brief, was Thomas J. Airone, for the appellant (plaintiff).

Michael E. Driscoll, with whom, on the brief, was Jeffrey F. Buebendorf, for the appellees (defendants).

Opinion

SCHALLER, J.

The plaintiff, Gloria Trimel, appeals from the judgment of the trial court rendered after it granted the motion for summary judgment filed by the defendants, Lawrence and Memorial Hospital Rehabilitation Center (Lawrence and Memorial) and Flanders Health Center (Flanders). On appeal, the plaintiff claims that the court improperly granted the motion because the court incorrectly characterized her claim as sounding in medical malpractice rather than in ordinary negligence. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The following facts are relevant to our discussion of this issue. The plaintiff suffers from multiple sclerosis and has been confined to a wheelchair since 1990. The defendants provided the plaintiff's regimen of physical therapy, which she attended on a regular basis starting in 1995. The physical therapy sessions included "transfers" to and from a wheelchair. One method of transfer involved the use of a transfer board, which permitted the plaintiff to move unassisted from the wheelchair to another location. The plaintiff eventually learned to perform transfers without assistance. Although she performed the transfers without assistance, she did so in the presence of a physical therapist. See footnote 4. On October 22, 1995, while attending a physical therapy session at Flanders, which is a satellite clinic of Lawrence and Memorial, the plaintiff attempted to use her transfer board to maneuver from her wheelchair to an exercise mat where the therapy session would begin. During that maneuver, the plaintiff fell from the wheelchair and sustained injuries.

As a result of the incident, the plaintiff filed a two count complaint, alleging that her injuries resulted from the negligence of her therapist, Maryann Mills, and Mills' employers, Lawrence and Memorial and Flanders. The defendants responded by filing a motion for summary judgment, supported by affidavits of Mills and Lawrence and Memorial Hospital chief operating officer, Cynthia Kane, and the transcript of the deposition testimony of the plaintiff and Mills. The court granted the motion, concluding that the action sounded in medical malpractice and, therefore, required the filing of a certificate of good faith pursuant to General Statutes § 52-190a. The plaintiff now appeals.

The plaintiff claims that the court improperly granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment by characterizing her claim as sounding in medical malpractice rather than ordinary negligence, and thereby requiring a certificate of good faith. She claims specifically that, as a matter of law, a claim for personal injuries resulting from a fall by a person dependent on a wheelchair while transferring from a wheelchair to an exercise mat in a physical therapy facility during a scheduled therapy session involves ordinary negligence, not medical malpractice. We disagree.

"Our standard of review of a trial court's decision to grant a motion for summary judgment is well established. Practice Book § 17-49 provides that summary judgment shall be rendered forthwith if the pleadings, affidavits and any other proof submitted show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. ... In deciding a motion for summary judgment, the trial court must view the evidence in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party.... The test is whether a party would be entitled to a directed verdict on the same facts....

"On appeal, [w]e must decide whether the trial court erred in determining that there was no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.... Because the trial court rendered judgment for the [defendants] as a matter of law, our review is plenary and we must determine whether the legal conclusions reached by the trial court are legally and logically correct and whether they find support in the facts set out in the memorandum of decision of the trial court.... On appeal, however, the burden is on the opposing party to demonstrate that the trial court's decision to grant the [movants'] summary judgment motion was clearly erroneous." (Citations omitted; internal quotation marks omitted.) Crystal Lake Clean Water Preservation Assn. v. Ellington, 53 Conn. App. 142, 146-47, 728 A.2d 1145, cert. denied, 250 Conn. 920, 738 A.2d 654 (1999).

The plaintiffs appeal, in essence, seeks to have us draw a line in her favor between ordinary negligence claims, which do not require good faith certificates, and medical malpractice claims, which do require a certificate of good faith pursuant to § 52-190a¹ and typically require expert testimony. See Caron v. Adams, 33 Conn. App. 673, 690, 638 A.2d 1073 (1994). The plaintiff concedes that the defendants are "health care providers" pursuant to General Statutes § 52-184b.² The plaintiff also concedes that if this court concludes that her claim was correctly classified as a medical malpractice claim, then the trial court's order was proper because she did not file a certificate of good faith.³

The classification of a negligence claim as either medical malpractice or ordinary negligence requires a court to review closely the circumstances under which the alleged negligence occurred. "[P]rofessional negligence or malpractice ... [is] defined as the failure of one rendering professional services to exercise that degree of skill and learning commonly applied under all the circumstances in the community by the average prudent reputable member of the profession with the result of injury, loss, or damage to the recipient of those services." (Emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted.) Santopietro v. New Haven, 239 Conn. 207, 226, 682 A.2d 106 (1996). Furthermore, malpractice "presupposes some improper conduct in the treatment or operative skill [or] ... the failure to exercise requisite medical skill...." (Citations omitted; emphasis added.) Camposano v. Claiborn, 2 Conn. Cir. Ct. 135, 136-37, 196 A.2d 129 (1963). From those definitions, we conclude that the relevant considerations in determining whether a claim sounds in medical malpractice are whether (1) the defendants are sued in their capacities as medical professionals, (2) the alleged negligence is of a specialized medical nature that arises out of the medical professional-patient relationship, and (3) the alleged negligence is substantially related to medical diagnosis or treatment and involved the exercise of medical judgment. See Spatafora v. St. John's Episcopal Hospital, 209 App. Div. 2d 608, 609, 619 N.Y.S.2d 118 (1994).

The facts of this case reveal that the defendants are medical professionals and that the plaintiff was at their clinic for treatment, specifically her therapy session. Her session was to begin on the exercise mat, which required her to transfer from the wheelchair to the mat. The question is whether allowing the plaintiff to transfer unassisted on the day in question, after she had learned to perform transfers without assistance, involved the exercise of medical judgment. That question is a close one.

It is evident that a transfer by one afflicted with multiple sclerosis requires substantial training through therapy and that performing the maneuver is, in itself, no small matter.⁴ Transfers required training and practice through the course of therapy, regardless of whether the health care provider concluded that the plaintiff was proficient enough to perform the transfer without supervision. The plaintiff testified in her deposition: "I asked [Mills] if she wanted me to do [the transfer] without her. I called across the room and she said yes." Mills testified in her deposition that one of the goals of the therapy at the time the injury occurred was "[w]orking on transfer training." Mills further testified that "[g]enerally she was independent in doing those transfers. If she came in and she was not having a good day, for whatever reason, whatever her version of not having a good day was, she would let me know that her arms were sore or her legs hurt or something wasn't feeling right. She would request assistance as she needed it." Mills also stated that she would determine the mode of transfer to physical therapy equipment by "her statement as [the plaintiff] comes in, how—usually you greet the patient, you ask them how they're doing, what type of day they had. She would indicate to me whether or not she had a good night or not so good night, whether she felt like she needed a lot of assistance that particular morning getting up with her aide coming to the house or if she generally felt weak."

Notwithstanding evidence adduced that the plaintiff performed transfers on her own at times, in the course of therapy sessions, Mills routinely made assessments of the plaintiffs physical capabilities in performing transfers. Training the plaintiff to perform transfers was a stated goal of therapy. The plaintiffs claim, therefore, is properly characterized as a medical malpractice claim.

The plaintiff further argues that her claim may be characterized as a negligent supervision claim rather than a medical malpractice claim because expert testimony is not required to establish the negligence of the defendants. Medical malpractice claims do not necessarily require expert testimony. Although a court requires expert testimony to establish the relevant standard of care in most cases; see Barrett v. Danbury Hospital, 232 Conn. 242, 252, 654 A.2d 748 (1995); "[s]ome aspects...