Court Opinion

ID: 9378335
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-03-10 01:00:49.459448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:20.396713
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-60374       Document: 00516671431            Page: 1     Date Filed: 03/09/2023

              United States Court of Appeals
                   for the Fifth Circuit
                                                                             United States Court of Appeals
                                                                                      Fifth Circuit

                                                                                    FILED
                                                                                March 9, 2023
                                      No. 22-60374                             Lyle W. Cayce
                                                                                    Clerk

   Marcus Walker, Individually, and on behalf of the
   wrongful death beneficiaries of De'Aubrey Rajheem
   Roscoe, Deceased,

                                                                 Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                          versus

   Jonathan Upp, Medstat EMS Crew Member, Individually
   and in his Official Capacity; MedStat EMS,
   Incorporated,

                                                               Defendants—Appellees.

                    Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Northern District of Mississippi
                              USDC No. 4:20-CV-156

   Before Davis and Haynes, Circuit Judges.
   Per Curiam:*
          Plaintiff-Appellant, Marcus Walker, appeals the district court’s
   summary judgment in favor of Defendants-Appellees, dismissing his state-

          *
             This opinion is not designated for publication. See 5th Cir. R. 47.5. This
   matter is being decided by a quorum because the third judge was recused. See 28 U.S.C.
   § 46(d).
Case: 22-60374         Document: 00516671431               Page: 2      Date Filed: 03/09/2023

                                          No. 22-60374

   law claims for negligence, gross negligence, and intentional infliction of
   emotional distress. Plaintiff argues that the district court’s order excluding
   his expert witness from testifying, which precipitated the summary judgment
   against him, was an abuse of discretion and manifestly erroneous. For the
   reasons set forth below, we AFFIRM.
                                    I. BACKGROUND
           Plaintiff is the brother of DeAubrey Rajheem Roscoe, who died on
   April 24, 2019, after being shot in Indianola, Mississippi. Defendant-
   Appellee, MedStat EMS, Inc. (MedStat), received the call of the shooting
   just after 8:00 P.M. and dispatched an ambulance. The MedStat crew
   consisted of Defendant Andrew Walda, an emergency medical technician
   and ambulance driver, and Defendant-Appellee Jonathan Upp, a paramedic.
           After local law enforcement officers 1 secured the scene, the MedStat
   crew made contact with Roscoe between 8:12 P.M. and 8:16 P.M. They
   found him lying in the yard of his girlfriend’s house, awake, alert, and
   oriented, with no active bleeding. Upp noted a gunshot wound to the right
   side of Roscoe’s back near the axillary space and two wounds to the posterior
   of his right upper arm. At 8:20 P.M., Roscoe was in the ambulance. Upp
   administered oxygen via a non-rebreather mask and then attempted
   unsuccessfully to gain vascular access. He next attempted to gain peripheral

           1
             Plaintiff also sued local law enforcement officers under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and state
   law, alleging that the officers violated Roscoe’s constitutional rights and were negligent by
   delaying the administration of medical care and attention to Roscoe. The district court
   dismissed those claims on summary judgment. Although dismissal of the federal claims
   removed the court’s original federal-question jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1331, the
   district court properly exercised its supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state-law
   claims at issue in this appeal. See 28 U.S.C. § 1367(a) (providing that in any civil action of
   which the district court has original federal-question jurisdiction, the district court has
   supplemental jurisdiction over related claims that “form part of the same case or
   controversy”).

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                                     No. 22-60374

   access via an intraosseous device, but both attempts failed because the
   catheters bent.
          Upp then observed that Roscoe was becoming short of breath and that
   the right side of his chest was moving less than the left. He suspected that
   air present in Roscoe’s chest cavity was putting pressure on his lung. Upp
   successfully performed a needle decompression which allowed the air to
   escape the chest cavity. But then at 8:24 P.M., Upp noted that Roscoe was
   in respiratory distress and attempted to intubate him, but could not because
   Roscoe had lockjaw.
          After Upp and Walda administered medical care to Roscoe at the
   scene for approximately sixteen minutes, they began transporting him to the
   hospital at 8:27 P.M. and arrived four minutes later at 8:31 P.M. Roscoe was
   pronounced dead twenty-five minutes later at 8:56 P.M. The hospital listed
   Roscoe’s cause of death as cardiac arrest due to gunshot wounds.
          In his complaint, Plaintiff alleged that Defendants had a duty to use
   reasonable and ordinary care to “ensure timely transport” of Roscoe to the
   nearest hospital and to ensure that he received the medical care he needed.
   He asserted state-law claims for negligence, gross negligence, and intentional
   infliction of emotional distress. Plaintiff designated Obie McNair, M.D., a
   practicing physician in internal and pulmonary medicine, as his medical
   expert witness.
          After discovery was completed, Defendants filed a motion in limine to
   exclude Dr. McNair from testifying at trial. They argued that Dr. McNair
   was not qualified as an expert in paramedicine by knowledge, skill,
   experience, training, or education. They further argued that Dr. McNair’s
   opinion regarding causation lacked a sufficient foundation. The district court
   granted Defendants’ motion, concluding that Dr. McNair was not qualified
   to testify and that he failed to demonstrate the reliability of his opinions.

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           Defendants also moved for summary judgment seeking dismissal of
   Plaintiff’s claims. They argued that because Dr. McNair’s testimony was
   excluded, Plaintiff lacked the expert testimony required to establish the
   standard of care applicable to Defendants and Defendants’ breach of that
   standard, as well as the causal connection between Defendants’ breach and
   Roscoe’s death. Noting that Mississippi law requires expert testimony to
   establish a claim of medical negligence, and that Plaintiff presented no other
   expert testimony than Dr. McNair’s, the district court granted Defendants’
   motion for summary judgment dismissing Plaintiff’s claims against them.
   Plaintiff timely filed a notice of appeal.
                                     II. DISCUSSION
           Plaintiff argues that Defendants breached the standard of care for field
   triage when they failed to timely transport Roscoe to the hospital for the
   necessary emergency medical care and that their breach was the proximate
   cause and/or contributing cause of his death. Plaintiff asserts that Dr.
   McNair is qualified to testify in this case; that the district court’s decision to
   exclude Dr. McNair was an abuse of discretion and manifestly erroneous; and
   that summary judgment was erroneously granted.
           Because the summary judgment in favor of Defendants stemmed from
   the exclusion of Dr. McNair’s testimony, we must first address whether the
   district court erred in its evidentiary ruling. 2             “[E]xclusion of expert
   testimony under Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 702 is within the traditional
   discretion of the trial court, . . . and we review it only for an abuse of discretion

           2
             Schindler v. Dravo Basic Materials Co., Inc. 790 F. App’x 621, 623 (5th Cir. 2019)
   (per curiam) (unpublished). Unpublished opinions issued in or after 1996 are “not
   controlling precedent” except in limited circumstances, but they “may be persuasive
   authority.” Ballard v. Burton, 444 F.3d 391, 401 n.7 (5th Cir. 2006).

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                                            No. 22-60374

   which amounts to manifest error.” 3 We “then review de novo the grant of
   summary judgment based on the evidence properly before the district
   court.” 4
           A. Exclusion of Dr. McNair
           The admissibility of expert evidence is governed by Rule 702 5 which
   permits opinion testimony from “[a] witness who is qualified as an expert by
   knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education” if such testimony will
   assist the trier of fact and (1) “the testimony is based on sufficient facts or
   data;” (2) “the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods;”
   and (3) “the expert has reliably applied the principles and methods to the
   facts of the case.” 6 “A district court should refuse to allow an expert witness
   to testify if it finds that the witness is not qualified to testify in a particular
   field or on a given subject.” 7 The proponent of the expert testimony has the
   burden of establishing by a preponderance of the evidence that the expert is

           3
               Munoz v. Orr, 200 F.3d 291, 300 (5th Cir. 2000) (citations omitted).
           4
               Id. (citations omitted).
           5
              Because state law provides the rule of decision, state law witness competency
   rules also apply through Fed. R. Evid. 601. See Coleman v. United States, 912 F.3d 824,
   833 (5th Cir. 2019) (explaining that “an expert’s testimony might be admissible under Rule
   702, yet the witness himself barred under Rule 601 when relevant state law deems him
   legally incompetent to testify on the matter”). In this case, however, there appears to be
   no specific witness competency rule under Mississippi law applicable here as there was in
   Coleman under Texas law. Furthermore, Plaintiff directs us to no statutory or
   jurisprudential authority indicating that application of Mississippi witness competency
   rules would provide for a different result in this case.
           6
               Fed. R. Evid. 702.
           7
               Wilson v. Woods, 163 F.3d 935, 937 (5th Cir. 1999) (citation omitted).

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                                            No. 22-60374

   qualified to testify. 8 “[B]efore admitting the testimony, the court must also
   gauge whether the ‘witness’s qualifying training or experience, and resultant
   specialized knowledge, are sufficiently related to the issues and evidence
   before the trier of fact that the witness’s proposed testimony will help the
   trier of fact.’” 9
           Dr. McNair opined, inter alia, that Roscoe’s condition required
   “immediate transport to the hospital for placement of a chest tube,” that
   everything Defendants undertook prior to transport could have been done in
   the ambulance during transport, and that Defendants “breached the standard
   of field triage care by staying on-scene 16 minutes before initiating transport
   to the hospital.” Plaintiff argues that Dr. McNair is well qualified to testify
   regarding the “standard of care for field triage and the causative factors in
   Roscoe’s death” based on his education, training, and experience in internal,
   pulmonary, and critical care medicine.
           As the district court noted, however, Dr. McNair conceded in his
   deposition “that the standard of care for pulmonology and internal
   medicine—the disciplines in which he does possess specialized knowledge,
   experience, and training—is different from the standard of care for
   paramedicine.” At the same time, Dr. McNair unequivocally stated that he
   had no experience or education in paramedicine. Additionally, he failed to
   cite to any literature or published works pertaining to paramedicine that he
   might have relied on in formulating his opinions. The only article Dr.
   McNair provided with his expert report, titled “Understanding Chest Tube

           8
             See United States v. Fullwood, 342 F.3d 409, 412 (5th Cir. 2003); Fed. R. Evid.
   104(a) (“The court must decide any preliminary question about whether a witness is
   qualified, a privilege exists, or evidence is admissible.”).
           9
               United States v. Wen Chyu Liu, 716 F.3d 159, 167 (5th Cir. 2013) (citation omitted).

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   Use for a Pneumothorax,” did not relate to the specific standard of care for
   treatment of this condition by a paramedic in the field.
          The district court also noted that aside from references to the practice
   of medicine generally, Dr. McNair did not provide any further clarification
   for his opinions or explain how the specifics of his professional background
   connect to the matter on which he offered his opinion. In so doing, the
   district court determined that Dr. McNair failed to demonstrate the
   reliability of his opinions, as required by Rule 702 and the Supreme Court
   cases interpreting and applying it, because he failed to present “specific data,
   facts, principles, or methodologies” supporting his opinion. 10
          As stated above, the standard of care in this case is that applicable to a
   paramedic operating in the field and on ambulances. In support of his
   standard of care opinions in this case, Dr. McNair relied on his “experience,
   education, and training,” none of which involves paramedicine.                We
   conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining
   that Dr. McNair was not qualified by his “knowledge, skill, experience,
   training, or education” 11 to testify as an expert in this case.
          B. Grant of Summary Judgment
          Having determined that it was not an abuse of discretion for the
   district court to exclude Dr. McNair’s testimony, we must now determine
   whether Plaintiff had other sufficient evidence before the court to survive
   Defendants’ summary judgment motion. As stated above, we review the
   district court’s grant of summary judgment de novo. 12 Summary judgment

          10
               See Fed. R. Evid. 702.
          11
               Id.
          12
               Munoz, 200 F.3d at 300.

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                                           No. 22-60374

   shall be granted “if the movant shows that there is no genuine dispute as to
   any material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” 13
           Mississippi law, which applies to Plaintiff’s state-law tort claims
   against Defendants, requires the plaintiff in a medical malpractice action to
   establish the standard of care, breach of that standard, and a causal
   connection between the breach and the plaintiff’s damages. 14 These three
   elements must be established by expert testimony. 15 We have specifically
   held that these requirements are applicable to claims against an ambulance
   service alleging negligence similar to the claims Plaintiff asserts herein. 16
           Because Dr. McNair was Plaintiff’s only medical expert, Plaintiff had
   no other sufficient evidence to establish the three elements needed to prove
   his case. Therefore, the district court did not err in granting summary
   judgment in favor of Defendants.
                                     III. CONCLUSION
           Based on the foregoing, the district court’s judgment is
   AFFIRMED.

           13
                Fed. R. Civ. Proc. 56(a).
           14
                Brown v. Baptist Mem’l Hosp. DeSoto, Inc., 806 So.2d 1131, 1134 (Miss. 2002).
           15
                Id.
           16
              In Patton v. Mobile Medic Ambulance Service, Inc., 330 F. App’x 64, 64-65 (5th Cir.
   2009) (per curiam) (unpublished), we held these requirements were applicable to a
   negligence claim against an ambulance service for failing to properly equip its ambulance
   and train its employees. See Ballard, 444 F.3d at 401 n.7 ( stating that unpublished opinions
   issued in or after 1996 “may be persuasive authority”).

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