Medical malpractice; Woodard v. Custer; Expert testimony; MCL 600.2912a(2); Craig v. Oakwood Hosp.; Skinner v. Square D Co.; O'Neal v. St. John Hosp. & Med. Ctr.; Causation; “Cause in fact” or “but for” cause; Genna v. Jackson; Ykimoff v. Foote Mem’l Hosp.; Robins v. Garg (On Remand); “Legal” or “proximate” cause; Wiley v. Henry Ford Cottage Hosp.; Jones v. Detroit Med. Ctr.; “Intervening” cause; Auto Owners Ins. Co. v. Seils; McMillian v. Vliet; Principle that negligent medical care in the treatment of an injury is typically considered foreseeable; Richards v. Pierce; People v. Schaefer; Taylor v. Wyeth Labs., Inc.

Holding that a factual question remained as to whether the defendants-doctors’ (Dr. Mittal and Dr. Badawi) alleged negligence was a proximate cause of the plaintiff’s injuries, the court reversed the trial court’s grant of summary disposition for those defendants and remanded. Plaintiff, through her guardian, sued defendants for medical malpractice, alleging their failure to properly treat her urinary tract infection caused her sepsis and resulted in a long hospital stay. The trial court found causation lacking and granted summary disposition for the doctors. On appeal, the court first found that a question of fact clearly remained as to whether Dr. Mittal was a proximate cause of plaintiff’s injuries, noting that “the chain of causation described by [plaintiff’s] experts leads straight from Dr. Mittal’s continuation of an inappropriate antibiotic to [her] urosepsis and lengthy ICU stay. Because [plaintiff] offered evidence to show that it [wa]s more likely than not that, but for Mittal’s conduct, a different result would have been obtained, summary disposition was improper.” The court next found that a question of fact also remained as to Dr. Badawi. It noted there was “disagreement among the doctors, but this disagreement merely establishes the existence of a fact question for the jury.” Further, “[v]iewing the record in a light most favorable to” plaintiff, “reasonable minds could conclude that Dr. Mittal’s negligence in failing to modify Dr. Badawi’s improper Cipro prescription was foreseeable, meaning that a question of fact remains for the jury regarding whether Mittal’s negligence should be seen as a superseding cause.”