Published by Arfaa Law Group
If you or someone close to you has been harmed by a physician’s negligence in a hospital setting, we can help. At Arfaa Law Group, our Baltimore hospital negligence attorneys understand how to navigate these types of claims and can put our knowledge to use in your case. You can rest assured that we will scrutinize the facts of your case and come up with a strategy to effectively respond to any motions for summary judgment that you may face in the process.
Under Maryland law, a party is entitled to summary judgment only when there is “no genuine issue as to any material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Put another way, the proponent of summary judgment must make a prima facie showing of their entitlement to summary judgment as a matter of law by demonstrating the absence of any material issues of fact in the case. Essentially, summary judgment is appropriate when the moving party establishes that the opposing party cannot win, even if all credibility conflicts are resolved in the opposing party’s favor. For instance, if a jurisdiction requires the plaintiff in a medical malpractice claim to produce an expert witness to establish the case, summary judgment may be proper if a plaintiff cannot produce a qualified expert.
This is actually what happened in the case of Hannon, et al. v. Mercy Medical Center, in which the Court of Special Appeals of Maryland affirmed the trial court granting summary judgment to the defendants in a Maryland medical malpractice case, prior to the scheduled trial, holding that the plaintiff failed to secure a medical expert to testify on their behalf during trial. This was sufficient reason for the trial court to grant the defendant’s motion for summary judgment.