First Department Grants Summary Judgment in Full in Pediatric Malpractice Case

Greg Freedman secured a significant appellate victory in an April 2 decision, in which the First Department modified the trial court’s underlying order to grant our clients summary judgment in full, resulting in a complete dismissal of claims.

The case was brought in Bronx Supreme by the mother of a child who had a congenital brain deformity known as a Chiari malformation.

Our client was the child’s pediatrician, and the codefendant was a pediatric neurologist whom our client referred him to after he began experiencing debilitating headaches.

The plaintiff claimed that our client, as the child’s general physician, was responsible for effectively “quarterbacking” his care, and that he failed to inform the plaintiff of a 2015 brain MRI that revealed the Chiari malformation (the plaintiff also claimed that the codefendant never told her about it, either).

According to the plaintiff, the malformation was negligently left untreated until the child developed serious neurological problems in 2020, which required multiple invasive brain surgeries.

The trial court found that the plaintiff raised issues of fact as to whether our client departed from the standard of care in failing to discuss the 2015 MRI results with the plaintiff.

On appeal, it was successfully argued that the child’s physical complaints during the time he treated with our client were not indicative of a symptomatic Chiari malformation, that surgical intervention would have been contraindicated at that point, and that the plaintiff’s expert failed to raise any triable issues of fact as to whether our client’s alleged malpractice (even if it did occur) proximately affected the child’s outcome.