ST. LOUIS — The Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District has affirmed a St. Louis County trial court’s decision granting summary judgment to Mercy Hospital East Communities and multiple related medical providers in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
The lawsuit was brought by Megan Jernigan, also known as Megan Krause, ruling that her claims could not proceed because she failed to timely disclose a medical expert and failed to properly contest the defendants’ factual assertions.
In a decision filed Dec. 30, the appellate court concluded that Jernigan did not comply with court-ordered deadlines requiring her to identify a qualified expert witness and did not file a timely response to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, resulting in the automatic admission of the defendants’ asserted facts and leaving Jernigan unable to establish essential elements of her malpractice claim.
The lawsuit originated in 2018, when Jernigan filed a medical malpractice action alleging that Mercy Hospital East Communities, Mercy Hospital Sounds, Mercy Clinic Oncology LLC and several physicians were negligent in providing her medical care on two separate occasions.
That case was dismissed for failure to prosecute, and she refiled her claims in June 2020. The trial court later entered a scheduling order setting deadlines for the disclosure of expert witnesses, which are required in Missouri medical malpractice cases to establish the applicable standard of care and whether a defendant breached that standard.
After modification by consent of the parties, the scheduling order required Jernigan to disclose her experts by May 7, 2024, while the defendants were required to disclose theirs by Aug. 5, 2024. The defendants complied with their deadline and simultaneously filed a motion for summary judgment supported by an expert affidavit asserting that their care met the applicable standard.
Jernigan did not identify an expert by her deadline and did not do so until Sept. 24, 2024, more than four months late and only one day before the rescheduled hearing on the summary judgment motion.
The appellate court rejected Jernigan’s argument that a continuance granted by the trial court also extended her deadline to disclose an expert, finding that the trial court’s orders only postponed the hearing date and did not modify the disclosure deadline.
The court noted that nothing in the record showed the trial court granted Jernigan additional time to endorse an expert and the trial court explicitly took that request under advisement rather than granting it.
Without expert testimony, the court held, Jernigan could not prove that the defendants failed to meet the required medical standard of care or that any such failure caused her injuries, which are essential elements of a medical malpractice claim under Missouri law.
As a result, the defendants were entitled to summary judgment as a matter of law.
The court also noted that Jernigan failed to file a timely response to the defendants’ motion for summary judgment.
In addition to the procedural failures related to expert disclosure and summary judgment practice, the court addressed deficiencies in Jernigan’s appellate briefing, noting that her brief failed to comply with Rule 84.04 by not properly stating points relied on, not including preservation statements, and not citing the record. While the court exercised its discretion to review the case on the merits despite those violations, it emphasized that the deficiencies further reflected a pattern of noncompliance with procedural rules.
Ultimately, the appellate court concluded that Jernigan’s failure to timely disclose an expert and failure to timely respond to the summary judgment motion were fatal to her case.
Because she could not establish a prima facie case of medical negligence and because the defendants’ factual assertions were deemed admitted, the trial court did not err in granting summary judgment.
The court affirmed the judgment in favor of Mercy Hospital East Communities and the remaining defendants, bringing the litigation to a close in their favor.
Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District case number: ED113609
