In April 2018, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of a family whose daughter underwent a kidney transplant at the age of 6. Her primary care pediatrician failed to diagnose the child’s kidney disease in time to halt its progression, resulting in the need for the transplant. The family took the physician to court for medical malpractice, and received $4.1 million award. The defendant appealed, however, claiming that the family had violated the legal doctrine of “one expert per specialty” when summoning medical experts while arguing their case before the trial court.
Details of the Malpractice Case
The patient remained under the care of the same primary care physician for the first six years of her life. During her first two years of life, three of her urine samples tested positive for protein. At her well child visit when she was 3 years old, her urine sample was negative for protein. The pediatrician did not test the patient’s urine at subsequent visits.
In 2007, when the patient was 6 years old, she went to the hospital due to a serious illness. Doctors at the hospital diagnosed her with kidney failure and performed a kidney transplant. The family filed a lawsuit against the primary care pediatrician, alleging that the pediatrician had been negligent in failing to test the child’s urine during the three years leading up to her kidney failure.
One of the medical experts the family summoned to testify during trial was a pathologist who said that kidney biopsies taken from the patient shortly before the transplant showed a slow-progressing kidney disease that would have been detected earlier if the pediatrician had perform yearly urine tests after the child was 3 years old.
The attorneys for the defendant argued that he had not breached the standard of care by ceasing to perform routine urine tests when he did. They said that protein in the urine is a common finding in children two years old and younger. Because these children wear diapers, their urinary tracts are frequently exposed to bacteria, and it is usually not an indication of serious illness. It often resolves once the child is toilet trained, as appeared to happen with the plaintiff.
Meanwhile, medical experts summoned by the defendant said that by the time the kidney biopsies were taken, the patient’s kidneys were so badly damaged that it was not possible to tell whether the cause of the damage was a rapid-onset kidney disease or a slow-progressing one, which is contrary to what the plaintiff’s medical expert had claimed.
A trial court awarded the plaintiff $4.1 million dollars, but the defendants appealed, claiming that the plaintiff had called more than one expert from the same medical specialty. The defense claimed that this violated the legal doctrine of “one expert per specialty” when summoning medical experts at trial court. Eventually, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the ruling in favor of the plaintiff. She is now almost 18 years old and has been living with transplanted kidneys for the past 11 years. Thanks to the help of expert physician witnesses, she has been able to afford her life-saving treatments.
