Antoinette BELLE, as personal representative of the Estate of Edith Louise Mitchell, deceased,
v.
Dennis E. GOLDASICH, Jr., et al.
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Appeal
from Mobile Circuit Court (CV-18-42).
Ronnie
L. Williams, Mobile, for appellant.
Robert
P. MacKenzie III, Sybil V. Newton, and C. Clayton Bromberg,
Jr., of Starnes Davis Florie LLP, Birmingham; and M. Warren
Butler of Starnes Davis Florie LLP, Mobile, for appellees
Dennis E. Goldasich, Jr., and Goldasich & Associates,
LLC.
Carter
H. Dukes and William E. Stevenson of Scott Dukes &
Geisler, P.C., Birmingham, for appellees Victoria Dye and
Fischer, Goldasich & Aughtman, LLC.
Joseph
E. Stott of Stott & Harrington, P.C., Birmingham, for
appellees J. Allan Brown, Joseph F. McGowin IV, and J. Allan
Brown, LLC.
MITCHELL,
Justice.
This is
a legal-malpractice case that stems from a
medical-malpractice action. Antoinette Belle, as personal
representative of the estate of Edith Louise Mitchell,
deceased, sued various health-care providers that treated
Mitchell while she was hospitalized in April 2009. Belle
eventually reached settlements with all of those health-care
providers except two physicians. The trial court entered a
summary judgment against Belle and in favor of the two
physicians, bringing the medical-malpractice action to a
close.
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Belle
then filed a legal-malpractice case against four attorneys
and three law firms that had represented her at varying times
in the medical-malpractice action, alleging that they had
been negligent in representing her. Belle later brought an
additional claim of fraudulent concealment. The attorneys and
law firms denied the allegations against them, arguing that
Belle's claims were untimely and that they had no factual
or legal basis. The trial court agreed and entered judgments
in favor of the attorneys and law firms. Belle appeals. We
affirm the judgments.
Facts
and Procedural History
On
April 23, 2009, Mitchell was transported by ambulance to a
Mobile hospital after complaining of chest pain. Mitchell was
admitted to the hospital and was treated over the next seven
days. On April 30, 2009, she passed away.
On
April 29, 2011, Belle, the court-appointed personal
representative of Mitchell's estate, filed a complaint in
the Mobile Circuit Court alleging that the hospital, nurses,
and physicians that had treated Mitchell in the week before
her death had provided her with substandard care that
proximately caused her death. Belle claimed that those
health-care providers had breached the applicable standards
of care by failing to ensure that Mitchell was given her
corticosteroid medication while she was hospitalized, even
though they had been given notice that Mitchell had been
taking that prescription medication for approximately 11
years. The complaint further alleged that the health-care
providers failed to timely recognize Mitchell's symptoms
of withdrawal from the corticosteroid and her dehydration and
that those failures hastened the organ failure that
ultimately caused her death.
Belle's
complaint was prepared and signed by Dennis E. Goldasich,
Jr., and Victoria Dye, attorneys who were at the time
affiliated with Fischer, Goldasich & Aughtman, LLC, a
Birmingham law firm ("the Fischer firm"). Goldasich
subsequently left the Fischer firm and started Goldasich
& Associates, LLC ("the Goldasich firm"),
taking Belle's case with him. Goldasich properly notified
the trial court at the time he separated from the Fischer
firm that he and the Goldasich firm would thereafter be
Belle's counsel of record. Because Dye remained at the
Fischer firm, she asked the trial court to allow her to
withdraw from the case. In October 2011, Dye's motion to
withdraw was granted, and it is undisputed that Dye and the
Fischer firm had no involvement in Belle's case after
that time. In April 2012, J. Allan Brown of J. Allan Brown,
LLC, a Mobile law firm ("the Brown firm"), filed a
notice of appearance indicating that he would also be
representing Belle in the medical-malpractice action. In May
2015, Brown's associate, Joseph F. McGowin IV, filed his
own notice of appearance on behalf of Belle.
In
January 2013, Belle reached a settlement with the hospital
and its nurses and agreed to dismiss them from the case,
leaving only her claims against two physicians to be
resolved. Those claims proceeded toward trial, and in March
2015 Belle's expert witness, Dr. Ednan Bajwa, was
deposed. During his deposition, Dr. Bajwa testified that
Mitchell's death had been caused by the failure of the
two physicians to diagnose and treat a urinary-tract
infection from which Mitchell was suffering when she was
hospitalized. Dr. Bajwa testified that the untreated
urinary-tract infection eventually became septic and caused
Mitchell's death.
The two
physicians thereafter moved the trial court to exclude Dr.
Bajwa's testimony about Mitchell's alleged
urinary-tract infection because Belle's complaint did not
assert a claim based on the failure to
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diagnose and treat such an infection. On August 3, 2015,
Belle filed an amended complaint in which she asserted for
the first time that the two physicians had failed to diagnose
and treat Mitchell's urinary-tract infection and that
this negligence had proximately caused Mitchell's death.
On August 18, 2015, the trial court denied the two
physicians' motion to exclude Dr. Bajwa's testimony.
It is
not entirely clear from the record what transpired over the
next 17 months, but on February 1, 2017, Belle's case was
transferred to a new judge. That same day, Brown, McGowin,
and the Brown firm moved to withdraw from the case, and on
February 6, 2017, the trial court granted their motion. On
March 29, 2017, the two physicians moved the trial court
again to exclude Dr. Bajwa's testimony about a
urinary-tract infection. The two physicians also moved the
trial court to enter a partial summary judgment in their
favor on Belle's claim asserting that Mitchell's
death was caused by an untreated urinary-tract infection. The
physicians argued that the claim was not brought until August
2015 — after the expiration of the two-year statute of
limitations that governs medical-malpractice actions —
and that the claim did not relate back to the original
complaint and was thus not permissible under Rule 15(c), Ala.
R. Civ. P. While those motions were pending, Edward Johnson
and Donald Stewart with Stewart & Stewart, P.C., filed
notices of appearance on behalf of Belle. Goldasich and the
Goldasich firm thereafter moved to withdraw from the case,
and on April 17, 2017, they were permitted to do so, ...