HPMB Ends 25-Year Malpractice Battle with Appellate Victory

In an April 20, 2026 decision, the Appellate Term, First Department affirmed a directed verdict for our client in a medical malpractice action that was brought over a quarter of a century ago.

The plaintiff alleged that our client, a podiatrist, as well as two codefendant orthopedic surgeons, negligently misdiagnosed a foot fracture back in 1998.  She litigated the case for more than twenty years, and across two courts, before it finally reached trial in April 2022.  HPMB partner Laura Murphy, with assistance by Of Counsel, Joseph Randazzo, obtained a directed verdict for our client, successfully arguing before Judge Shahabuddeen A. Ally that plaintiff had failed to make out a prima facie case of liability.

Plaintiff appealed the dismissal of her suit to the Appellate Term, First Department, with an impassioned, 50-page brief that raised almost a dozen alleged errors by the trial court. We argued in response that the court correctly precluded plaintiff from introducing numerous radiological films and medical records into evidence, that her expert failed to show either that our client departed from the standard of care or proximately caused her any injury, and that her proof at trial accordingly did not warrant her case being submitted to a jury.

The Appellate Term agreed with all our arguments and affirmed Judge Ally’s award of a directed verdict.  It specifically held that “plaintiff not only failed to prove that she had a fracture when she saw defendants, but also failed to show that defendants should have diagnosed it under the standard of care in 1998, and that her treatment should have been different than what defendants provided.”  The Appellate Term also agreed with us on all of the trial court’s evidentiary rulings, including its refusal to let her expert testify as to a Power Point presentation that formed the heart of her case.

HPMB has now successfully defended against plaintiff’s claims at both the trial and appellate levels, bringing a decades-old war of attrition to a close.