Mississippi Supreme Court Reinstates Summary Judgment for Surgeon, Excluding Radiologist as Expert Witness

The dispute centers on the February 2018 death of Lisa Lee, a patient with end-stage liver disease and cirrhosis who died of urosepsis after being discharged from Delta Regional Medical Center in Greenville, Mississippi. Her daughter, Whitney Loren Lee, sued Dr. Doolittle and Greenville Surgical Clinic, P.A., alleging that the surgeon failed to properly diagnose cholecystitis and sepsis, and failed to recommend appropriate treatment.

Dr. Doolittle had evaluated Lisa Lee and concluded that her end-stage liver disease rendered her not a candidate for surgery. He signed off without recommending additional diagnostic testing or nonsurgical alternatives. Lisa Lee was discharged on February 19, 2018, but presented at another hospital two days later with sepsis and died on February 22, 2018.

To establish her malpractice claim, Whitney Lee designated Dr. Scott A. Resnick, a board-certified interventional radiologist licensed in Illinois and a professor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, as her expert witness. Dr. Resnick opined that Dr. Doolittle's clinical conclusions directly contradicted the objective imaging findings of cholecystitis and that the surgeon failed to recommend nonsurgical options for gallbladder decompression such as percutaneous cholecystostomy tube placement.

The Washington County Circuit Court, presided over by Judge Richard A. Smith, granted Dr. Doolittle's motion to strike Dr. Resnick's designation. The trial court found that Dr. Resnick's curriculum vitae contained no education, training or experience which would qualify him to render opinions related to the standard of care for a general surgeon determining a candidate for surgery.

The Court of Appeals reversed that decision in April 2025, holding that the trial court had abused its discretion. The appellate court held that Dr. Resnick's averments, combined with his knowledge, training, and education, provided him with sufficient familiarity to testify to the standard of care that should be followed by a general surgeon.

Writing for the majority, Justice Branning reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the trial court's judgment. The court emphasized that while a malpractice expert need not share the defendant's specialty, the expert must be sufficiently familiar with the defendant doctor's specialty to testify about the standard of care.

The majority found that Dr. Resnick's affidavit contained no assertion that he was familiar with the standard of care for a general surgeon, no reference to training or experience in general surgery, and no evidence that he had ever evaluated patients with end-stage liver disease to assess surgical candidacy.

The court rejected the Court of Appeals' reasoning that the expert's opinions were limited to misdiagnosis and nonsurgical options rather than surgical candidacy. Justice Branning called that distinction irrelevant because Dr. Resnick lacked sufficient familiarity with the specialty of general surgery to render expert testimony.

The majority also reiterated the broad deference Mississippi courts give trial judges as evidentiary gatekeepers. Quoting prior precedent, Justice Branning wrote that trial judges are ensuring that the expert testimony is both relevant and reliable, and that an expert must exercise the same level of intellectual rigor that characterizes the practice of an expert in the relevant field.

In dissent, Presiding Justice King, joined by Justice Sullivan, argued that the majority drew the line of required familiarity too narrowly. King emphasized that Dr. Resnick's challenge to Dr. Doolittle's conduct was not about surgical candidacy, but about the failure to order further diagnostic testing and the failure to recommend a percutaneous gallbladder drain.

King noted that Dr. Resnick had extensive experience with percutaneous procedures, had taught vascular surgery at Northwestern since 2004, and had personally stated familiarity with the facilities and options available to Dr. Doolittle at the time of the consultation.

Without a qualified expert to establish the applicable standard of care and causation, Whitney Lee's claim against Dr. Doolittle cannot survive summary judgment under Mississippi law. The Supreme Court's decision effectively ends that portion of the litigation.