Woods v. Oak Hill Community Medical Center, Inc.

134 Ohio App. 3d 261
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedSeptember 3, 1999
DocketNo. 98CA837
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 134 Ohio App. 3d 261 (Woods v. Oak Hill Community Medical Center, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Woods v. Oak Hill Community Medical Center, Inc., 134 Ohio App. 3d 261 (Ohio Ct. App. 1999).

Opinion

Harsha, Judge.

I

Donald A. Woods appeals a judgment of the Jackson County Court of Common Pleas dismissing his complaint for injunctive relief and denying certification of a class action. He assigns three errors for our review:

“I. The trial court erred in finding that appellant Donald Woods lacks sufficient standing to bring this class action.

“II. The trial court erred in effectively overruling appellant’s motion for class certification, as certification was proper under Civil Rule 23.

“III. As applied by the Jackson County Court of Common Pleas, Civil Rule 23 is unconstitutional, as it violates the affected class’ Article I, Section 16 [Ohio Constitution] guarantee of the ‘right to a remedy.’ ”

We hold that the trial court correctly determined that the appellant lacked standing to seek an injunction and maintain a class action. Further, we find no constitutional infirmity in denying the appellant’s attempt at maintaining a class action. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court’s dismissal of the appellant’s complaint.

II

In April 1995, the appellant arrived at the emergency room at Oak Hill Community Medical Center (“Oak Hill”) complaining of chest pain. An emergency room physician administered a series of tests on the appellant, including a CKMB% blood enzyme test. The CKMB% test is designed to detect the level of CKMB, an enzyme released by the heart during a myocardial infarction, i.e., a heart attack. A “normal” level of CKMB% is less than four percent, while “abnormal” levels are between four percent and twenty-five percent. The appellant’s test results, which were printed on a report form from Oak Hill’s laboratory, showed a CKMB% ratio of 12.2 percent. However, the report form erroneously listed the “normal range” as between four percent and twenty-five percent.

The appellant remained at the hospital overnight before physicians later transferred him to Mt. Carmel Medical Center in Columbus, where he underwent heart catheterization and balloon angioplasty. A year later, the appellant filed a medical malpractice suit against Oak Hill and other defendants alleging that the [266]*266hospital failed to timely diagnose and treat his myocardial infarction. During the course of the malpractice lawsuit, cardiologist John Schroeder of the Stanford University Medical School reviewed the appellant’s medical records and informed him of the incorrect notation of the “normal range” on the Oak Hill laboratory’s CKMB% test report form. Schroeder also informed Oak Hill about this error, which the hospital’s laboratory corrected in June 1996. Oak Hill’s laboratory had listed the incorrect normal range on its report forms since September 1993. The appellant’s medical malpractice suit ended in January 1998 with a jury verdict in favor of the defendants.

Prior to the trial in his medical malpractice action against Oak Hill, the appellant filed suit in this case for injunctive relief and certification of a class action. The complaint alleged that the appellant had asked Oak Hill to notify other patients who received CKMB% test results with an incorrect “normal range” notation and that Oak Hill had refused to do so. The complaint further prayed that Oak Hill “be ordered by injunction to identify the patients examined, diagnosed, and treated by using the incorrect normal range for the CKMB% test, to notify them, and to provide such further services to them as are necessary to protect their health.” The complaint and a separately filed motion also asked the court to certify the appellant’s “injunctive relief action” as a class action.1 The appellant defined the class as those patients who had undergone CKMB% testing at Oak Hill from September 1993 through June 1996 and whose CKMB% results had shown between four percent and twenty-five percent.

Oak Hill moved to dismiss the appellant’s complaint, arguing that the appellant lacked standing to sue for injunctive relief and therefore lacked standing to maintain a class action. Oak Hill also argued that the trial court, in any event, should deny the appellant’s certification motion because the appellant had failed to satisfy the Civ.R. 23 requisites for a class action lawsuit. The trial court granted Oak Hill’s motion to dismiss for lack of standing, which necessarily resulted in denial of the class certification motion. The court found that the appellant had already been notified of the inaccuracy of his CKMB% report form. Because the appellant had already received notice of the inaccurate CKMB% form from the Oak Hill laboratory, the court found that he “lack[ed] the standing to maintain this action.” The appellant filed a timely notice of appeal.

Ill

We analyze the first and second assignments of error -together, as they raise interrelated issues concerning the trial court’s dismissal of the appellant’s com[267]*267plaint. The trial court found that the appellant lacked standing to sue in his own right, which foreclosed the possibility that he could maintain an action on behalf of either a class or himself alone. The appellant argues in the first two assignments of error that the trial court’s standing analysis was incorrect and that he met all requirements contained in Civ.R. 23 for maintaining a class action. We disagree with the appellant.

Normally, we review a trial court’s determination of whether a class action may be maintained under Civ.R. 23 using an abuse-of-discretion standard. Hamilton v. Ohio Sav. Bank (1998), 82 Ohio St.3d 67, 70, 694 N.E.2d 442, 447; Marks v. C.P. Chem. Co., Inc. (1987), 31 Ohio St.3d 200, 31 OBR 398, 509 N.E.2d 1249, syllabus. This case, however, does not involve merely the court’s denial of a certification motion. Indeed, the court did not explicitly deny the appellant’s motion to certify a class action under Civ.R. 23. Rather, the trial court granted Oak Hill’s motion to dismiss the appellant’s complaint for lack of standing to sue. In effect, the court’s decision constitutes a dismissal pursuant to Civ.R. 12(B)(6) for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. See A-1 Nursing Care of Cleveland, Inc. v. Florence Nightingale Nursing, Inc. (1994), 97 Ohio App.3d 623, 626-627, 647 N.E.2d 222, 224-225 (holding that motion to dismiss under Civ.R. 12[B] is proper vehicle to raise a lack of standing); Yo-Can, Inc. v. The Yogurt Exchange, Inc. (Dec. 17, 1998), Mahoning App. No. 95CA72, unreported, 1998 WL 896547 (relying upon A-1 Nursing Care to observe that Civ.R. 12[B][6] motion was proper method of raising lack of standing). A dismissal for failure to state a claim presents a legal question, which we review de novo. Shockey v. Fouty (1995), 106 Ohio App.3d 420, 424, 666 N.E.2d 304, 306; Wilson v. State (1995), 101 Ohio App.3d 487, 490, 655 N.E.2d 1348, 1350. Dismissal for failure to state a claim is proper if it appears beyond doubt, presuming all factual allegations in the complaint to be true, that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts that would entitle him to relief. State ex rel. Edwards v. Toledo City School Disk Bd. of Edn. (1995), 72 Ohio St.3d 106, 108, 647 N.E.2d 799, 801-802; Perez v. Cleveland (1993), 66 Ohio St.3d 397, 399, 613 N.E.2d 199, 200.

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Related

State ex rel. Woods v. Oak Hill Community Med. Ctr.
2001 Ohio 96 (Ohio Supreme Court, 2001)

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Bluebook (online)
134 Ohio App. 3d 261, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/woods-v-oak-hill-community-medical-center-inc-ohioctapp-1999.