Medical malpractice; Immunity under the Pandemic Healthcare Immunity Act (PHCIA); MCL 691.1475; Franklin v McLaren Flint; Skipper-Baines v Board of Hosp Managers for City of Flint; Jokinen v Beaumont Hosp Troy; Enforcement of scheduling orders; Cleveland v Hath; Motion for reconsideration

Holding that defendants failed to show they were entitled to PHCIA immunity, the court reversed summary disposition in their favor and remanded. Plaintiff’s decedent died in 2020 after being admitted and treated by defendants-Beaumont Hospital Farmington Hills, Hartford Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, and Mission Point of Detroit. The trial court treated two defendants’ summary disposition motions as unopposed due to plaintiff’s failure to file a response, and granted the motions. It also denied plaintiff’s motion for reconsideration. On appeal, the court first held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in treating the motions as unopposed, or in denying the motion for reconsideration. But it reviewed the decision to grant the unopposed motions de novo to determine if they were sufficient to establish “defendants’ entitlement to immunity under the PHCIA as a matter of law.” Applying MCL 691.1475 as interpreted by Franklin, Skipper-Baines, and Jokinen, it concluded it was clear that they were not. “Beaumont failed to identify, in plaintiff’s allegations or otherwise, the legally requisite connection between [its] pandemic-related services and the negligence alleged in plaintiff’s complaint. Apart from the temporal relationship between plaintiff’s claims and the time during which Beaumont generally provided pandemic-related care, Beaumont made no argument and submitted no evidence that showed there was a nexus between the pandemic and the alleged negligence.” While records that were not properly before the court showed that the decedent was evaluated and tested for COVID-19 upon her admission, the court could not consider this evidence. It added that it did “not see how the mere fact of COVID-19 testing upon admission, with nothing more, would provide proof of any connection between the pandemic and the alleged negligence in this case.” The court found Hartford’s motion, which likewise relied on the temporal overlap, “similarly deficient.” As Mission Point simply concurred in its codefendants’ motions, it also was not entitled to judgment as a matter of law.