Magbegor v. Triplette

212 F. Supp. 3d 1317, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183763, 2016 WL 6514098
CourtDistrict Court, N.D. Georgia
DecidedMarch 16, 2016
DocketCIVIL ACTION FILE NO. 1:15-CV-1811-MHC
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 212 F. Supp. 3d 1317 (Magbegor v. Triplette) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, N.D. Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Magbegor v. Triplette, 212 F. Supp. 3d 1317, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183763, 2016 WL 6514098 (N.D. Ga. 2016).

Opinion

ORDER

MARK H. COHEN, United States District Judge

This case comes before the Court on Defendants’ Motion to Exclude the Opinion Testimony of Plaintiffs Designated Expert Phillip Langer, MD [Doc. 52] (“Defs.’ Mot.”). For the reasons stated below, the motion is GRANTED.

I. BACKGROUND

The above-styled personal injury case arises out of a motor vehicle accident that occurred on June 7, 2013. Compl. [Doc. 1-1] ¶¶ 12-19. Defendants admit liability, specifically that Defendant Gary Steven Triplette “was negligent and that his negligence proximately caused his vehicle to collide with the side of Plaintiffs vehicle.” Answer [Doc. 8] ¶¶ 14, 16. As a result of the accident, Plaintiff alleges that he suffered “severe and permanent injuries.” Compl. ¶ 14. In support of Plaintiffs claim of damages, Plaintiff offers the testimony of Phillip R. Langer, M.D., who is expected to opine as to “(1) a description of the injury Plaintiff suffered and the cause of his pain and symptoms; (2) the past medical treatment including surgery necessitated by his injuries; (3) Plaintiffs physical condition and limitations; and (4) that the shoulder injury was more likely than not caused by the June, 2013 motor vehicle wreck.” PL’s First Suppl. Disclosures dated October 22, 2015 [Doc. 52-3] attached as Ex. 2 to Defs.’ Mot. Dr. Langer is a treating physician of Plaintiff who first saw Plaintiff on November 15, 2013, and later operated on Plaintiffs shoulder to repair the rotator cuff on February 19, 2014. Id.

Dr. Langer testified that Plaintiffs shoulder injury was caused by a motor vehicle accident:

Q. Is it your opinion within a reasonable degree of medical certainty that Mr. Magbegor’s shoulder injury that you operated on was caused by a motor vehicle accident?
A. Yes.
* * *
Q. And was everything you saw medically consistent with the fact the injury [1321]*1321had occurred around the time of that motor vehicle wreck?
A. Yes.

Dep. of Phillip R. Langer taken Dec. 10, ■2015 [Doc. 52-4] (“Langer Dep.”) at 43, 48. Dr. Langer also stated, based on his education, training, experience, the patient history he received from Plaintiff, and his observations during his treatment of Plaintiff, that he did not “see anything in there that alarmed me of any chronicity to the injury.” Id. at 9-10.

Dr. Langer explained that he reached his opinion based on the assumption that, if Plaintiff’s injury was chronic (something the doctor defined in terms of being a “year or two years” old), Plaintiffs shoulder would have exhibited “atrophy of the muscle,” “shrinkage of the muscle size,” and “fatty infiltration,” and Dr. Langer made no such observations. Id at 11, 29; see also Id. at 14 (confirming that the MRI findings were consistent with his observations “[t]hat it’s an acute versus chronic injury and correlate with something that would be within the time frame he was injured.”).-

During his deposition, Dr. Langer testified that he performed a physical examination of Plaintiff, reviewed his x-rays and his MRI imaging, and ultimately performed surgery on. Plaintiff to repair his partially-torn rotator cuff. Langer Dep. at 6-8. Dr. Langer admitted he did not make any use of the medical history Plaintiff completed on the pre-printed form, but instead relied upon the oral history Plaintiff provided directly during their • initial visit. Id. at 23-24 (“Q: did you make any use of this history Mr. Magbegor provided? A: No”). Dr. Langer memorialized the oral history Plaintiff gave as follows:

Prince is here as a new patient to me referred by Dr. Weeks. He was in a motor vehicle accident. He is a 24-year-old right hand dominant male who has left shoulder pain and weakness ever since his car accident when he was pinned in between a motor vehicle and a truck.

Dr. Langer pre-operative medical note dated November 15, 2013 [Doc. 52-11],

When Dr. Langer was questioned specifically about his observations and the timing of Plaintiffs injury, he testified as follows:

Q. But what’s the range, I mean in terms of how long ago before your surgery, that this injury could have occurred?
A. So I can’t answer that question because all I can say is that there was no atrophy and no contaminant damage either on MRI or intraoperatively that would suggest that this was greater than the time period that he outlined.
Everybody’s going to react differently to an injury. Some people compensate more than others, so I can’t give you an objective window. There is no way to do that.
[[Image here]]
Q. Can you say within a reasonable degree of medical certainty that it is more probable than not that Mr. Magbe-gor—or Mr. Magbegor’s injury occurred in the year 2013?
A. That it did or did not occur?
Q. Did occur sometime in the year 2013.
A. No, I can’t say that.

Langer Dep. at 56.

Although he did determine that the injury was consistent with an injury that could happen in a car wreck, Dr. Langer testified that he was not able to identify the event that had caused Plaintiff’s injury. Id at 12-13. Dr. Langer testified that he did not perform an analysis or obtain additional information from Plaintiff to exclude possible causes of Plaintiffs shoulder injury, other than the automobile accident, [1322]*1322because his observations were consistent with the story Plaintiff told him. Langer Dep. at 26-28, 43.

Q. Tell me how, if at all, from a scientific standpoint you excluded other possible causes of an acute shoulder injure [sic] besides a motor vehicle accident for Mr. Magbegor.
A. Again, I am at the mercy of what the patient provides. So if I ask you how it happened and Mr. Magbegor tells me he was in a motor vehicle accident, I believe the patient.
If there is not—if his mechanism of injury that he’s describing doesn’t correlate with my exam, then we will pursue other possibilities and I start looking for zebras. I did not have any reason to do that.
[[Image here]]
Q. And how did you scientifically exclude other causes such as his other recreational activities from being a possible cause of his acute shoulder injury?
A. So I did not know about his other exercise; I did not obtain that. He did not provide that. And there isn’t anything that I see scientifically that isn’t consistent with the mechanism that he described.
Q. What is that mechanism?
A. A car accident that he said he was— what he told me, was pinned between a motor vehicle and a truck.
Q. And that’s because of what he relayed to you about being pinned in between a motor vehicle and a truck?
A. That’s what he told me, yes.
Q. That’s what you believe to be the mechanism of his injury?
A. That’s what he told me.

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Bluebook (online)
212 F. Supp. 3d 1317, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 183763, 2016 WL 6514098, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/magbegor-v-triplette-gand-2016.