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Wednesday, July 09, 2014

New Medical Malpractice Case (n.k.a. Health Care Liability Action): Plaintiff Allowed to Nonsuit Case to Cure Allegedly Defective Certificate of Good Faith

The Tennessee Court of Appeals just issued its opinion in Davis v. Ibach, No. W2013-02514-COA-R3-CV (Tenn. Ct. App. Jul. 9, 2014).  The summary from the opinion states as follows:
This is a medical malpractice wrongful death action. After the plaintiff filed this lawsuit, he timely filed a certificate of good faith, as required by the medical malpractice statute. The certificate did not include a statement that the executing party had “zero” violations of the statute. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss based on this omission. The plaintiff in turn filed a notice of voluntary nonsuit without prejudice. The defendants objected to a dismissal without prejudice. The defendants argued that, if the certificate of good faith does not strictly comply with the statutes, the trial court must dismiss the case with prejudice. The trial court granted the voluntary nonsuit without prejudice, and the defendants now appeal that decision.
Discerning no error, we affirm.
Here is a link to the opinion:

http://www.tncourts.gov/sites/default/files/davistopn_0.pdf

Note: this opinion deals with some law that is no longer in effect.  However, that does not appear to affect the holding of this case.

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