On November 5, 2007, an 86 year old woman entered Graystone Ophthalmology for a routine vision examination and left the doctor’s office with both a fractured shoulder and a fractured hip along the right side of her body. In an effort to receive help with some of the costs for treatment and rehabilitation of her injuries, the woman proceeded with a lawsuit against the doctor’s office.

When filing a lawsuit, there are many different levels of review for your claim. In this situation, the first level of review – the trial court – granted summary judgment in favor of Graystone. But what does this mean? Every claim has a certain number of elements that must be proven in order for you to win your lawsuit. For example, negligence (what the injured party is claiming) has four elements: (1) Duty, (2) Breach of that Duty, (3) Proximate Causation, and (4) Damages. Essentially, if the person that is trying to dispose of the case (in this matter, the doctor’s office) can show that the injured party cannot prove one of those four elements, the case will not proceed.

However, this is not the end of the line. In this case, Graystone was successful at the trial level and was granted summary judgment, but the plaintiff appealed to the next level of review – the Court of Appeals (“COA”). The COA in this case determined that the trial court was incorrect and reversed the decision. Both parties agreed that Graystone Ophthalmology owed the patient a duty (satisfying element one) and that the patient did in fact receive damages or injuries (satisfying element four).

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