Medical malpractice, Exclusion of evidence; “HEART score” (a patient’s history, electrocardiogram, age, risk factors, & troponin levels); Relevance; MRE 402; MRE 401; Evidence as to the decedent’s mother’s cause of death; MRE 803(19) hearsay exception; Lay witness; The decedent’s statements about chest pain; MRE 803(3); Cumulative effect of the alleged errors; Personal representative (PR)

Concluding that the trial court did not err by excluding evidence offered at trial, the court affirmed. Plaintiff-PR’s decedent, Stacey Jenkins, was taken to the ER of defendant-Ascension St. John Hospital (the Hospital) because of chest pains. She stayed in the ER “for several hours for testing and observation, but she was discharged that day and left the Hospital. Early the next morning, she died. An autopsy revealed that she suffered from severe blockage of several coronary arteries.” On appeal, plaintiff contended “that the trial court erred by excluding testimony about what Jenkins’s HEART score might have been, Jenkins’s mother’s cause of death, and statements that Jenkins allegedly made.” The court concluded that plaintiff’s standard-of-care expert witness “clearly stated that the HEART score was a tool available to treating physicians, but the use of it is not even part of the standard of care when examining a patient complaining of chest pain. Plaintiff’s contention that the trial court’s exclusion of Jenkins’s hypothetical HEART score took away a theory of how [defendant-]Dr. Yatooma’s treatment fell below the standard of care is misplaced. Because the calculation of Jenkins’s HEART score was immaterial to whether Dr. Yatooma’s care constituted medical malpractice, the trial court did not commit an abuse of discretion by excluding testimony about the HEART score.” Also, the court found that lacking “personal knowledge of Jenkins’s mother’s cause of death, the exception in MRE 803(19)” did not apply to testimony from family members that the mother died of a heart attack. Further, “the jurors heard sufficient testimony about Jenkins’s mother’s health by virtue of the trial court’s narrowly tailored ruling on the evidentiary issue, which neither constituted an abuse of discretion nor ‘appears to [this Court to be] inconsistent with substantial justice.’” Finally, Jenkins’s statement about her chest pain satisfied “MRE 803(3)’s exception to the hearsay rule, so the trial court abused its discretion” in excluding her sister Tanya’s “testimony about it. A correct decision overruling the hearsay objection would not have changed the result of the trial, however, because witnesses other than Tanya Jenkins testified about Jenkins’s claim of chest pain. Thus, plaintiff is not entitled to relief on the basis of the trial court’s one abuse of discretion.”