When do you need an expert?
A plaintiff sued a hospital for damages she allegedly sustained when she slipped and fell in the emergency room at an Atlanta hospital. The hospital moved for summary judgment, arguing that the plaintiff couldn’t establish that her damages were caused by the fall.
O.C.G.A. § 9-11-56(c) states that summary judgment is appropriate when “the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show that there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.”
Fall at the ER and event before the fall
The plaintiff took her daughter to the ER for treatment during the early morning hours of February 7, 2019. As they walked out of the exam room, the plaintiff slipped on the hallway floor, falling on her left knee. There was no sign in the area warning of a wet floor, but the plaintiff felt wetness after she fell. As hospital workers helped her to her feet, she saw a man down the hall cleaning the floor with a machine. She also heard nurses say, “Oh, my God, she’s fallen, the floor is wet.” A nurse then instructed someone to “bring the sign out here so nobody else will get hurt.”
As the plaintiff got up, she felt “like a snap or a little pop” in her left knee, which was in pain and began to swell at the hospital. The plaintiff experienced continuing pain for months after the fall, including pain so severe that, at times, she couldn’t walk. She had difficulty navigating stairs, and the pain forced her to cut back her hours working as a hairstylist.
A year before this fall at the ER, in 2018, the plaintiff was involved in an auto accident, during which she suffered a torn meniscus in her left knee that required treatment and rehabilitation. But she testified that she’d recovered and was feeling well, and that everything was fine before she fell at the hospital. At that point, she’d also been released by her medical providers and was no longer on medication for knee pain.
The plaintiff testified: “I was able to wear my heels and walk, dance, walk forward down the steps, all of that, until this incident at the hospital happened to me.”
To support its summary judgment motion, the hospital offered the affidavit of an orthopedic surgeon, who reviewed an MRI scan of the plaintiff’s left knee taken following the 2018 car wreck, but before her February 2019 fall, as well as a scan taken approximately 10 months after the fall. The expert testified that that, in his opinion, the fall at the hospital wasn’t the cause of the abnormalities on the MRI of the left knee done after her fall. Rather, he stated that the MRI demonstrated degenerative findings and a meniscus tear and cyst that were already present on an October 9, 2018 MRI.
Citing the plaintiff’s failure to submit contrary expert evidence, the hospital argued that she couldn’t establish that her knee injury was caused or exacerbated by the fall at the hospital. The trial court agreed, finding that the plaintiff didn’t offer any testimony from a physician to link her claimed injuries to the fall. As a result, the trial court granted summary judgment to the hospital.
Court of Appeals Reverses the Absurd Ruling by the Trial Court
Chief Judge Amanda H. Mercier of the Georgia Court of Appeals wrote that a plaintiff typically isn’t required to present expert evidence to prove causation in a simple negligence case. As the Georgia Supreme Court has explained, “where the causal link between the defendant’s conduct and the [plaintiff’s] injury can be determined by a lay jury without expert guidance, no expert evidence need be produced to defeat a defense motion for summary judgment.”
Expert causation evidence is necessary, however, when a “medical question” involving truly specialized medical knowledge (rather than the sort of medical knowledge that’s within common understanding and experience) is needed to establish a causal link between the defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury.
The hospital argued that this case demanded such specialized knowledge, asserting that expert testimony is generally necessary to connect an accident to the exacerbation of a preexisting injury. But where problems relating to a pre-existing injury cease, then reoccur soon after the incident giving rise to litigation, Judge Mercier said that the jury doesn’t need expert evidence to find that although the incident didn’t cause the pre-existing injury, it aggravated it. And the plaintiff testified that, prior to the February 7, 2019 fall, her pre-existing knee pain had resolved through treatment and therapy, allowing her to move well and live her normal life. She’d been released from care by her treating physician and was no longer on medication. She then fell on her knee at the hospital, experiencing immediate pain that became severe, impacting her mobility and daily activities.
Judge Mercier concluded that while the 2018 car wreck may have initially caused the plaintiff’s torn meniscus, she testified that the problems associated with that condition had ended before she fell in the emergency room.
Under these circumstances, jurors were capable of determining whether the pain and other damages the plaintiff allegedly incurred after February 7, 2019, resulted from the fall.
Accordingly, the plaintiff wasn’t required to present expert causation testimony to survive summary judgment. The Court held that factual issues remained as to causation. As a consequence, the Court of Appeals held that the trial court erred in granting the hospital’s motion for summary judgment. The judgment was reversed. Willis v. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Inc., 2025 Ga. App. LEXIS 555, 2025 LX 534313 (Ga. App. November 25, 2025).
Insurance companies and corporations love to hire experts, aka “hired guns” to make mountains out of molehills
Contact an experienced Atlanta personal injury lawyer Atlanta residents trust and know will beat the silly experts defense law firms hire. When it comes to hired guns, we are happy to take them down. We offer free consultations to all prospective clients. Contact an Atlanta personal injury attorney at Tobin Injury Law 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by calling 404-JUSTICE (404-587-8423).