Subject:  Update on Beaumon tHospital case |
Author:
Chris
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Date Posted: 04/14/05 12:34pm
Beaumont turns to high court in burned-baby case
Web-posted Apr 14, 2005
By STEPHEN FRYE
Of The Daily Oakland Press
Lawyers for William Beaumont Hospital have asked the state Supreme Court to step in during the current trial at Oakland County Circuit Court.
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Attorneys for the hospital - being sued by Macomb Township residents Craig and Shelley Laporte, whose newborn son was badly burned in an oxygen tent fire at the hospital in October 1997 - filed an emergency application for leave to appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court as the trial was opening in Oakland County before Judge Gene Schnelz on Tuesday.
According to Ven Johnson, one of the Laportes' attorneys, the issue the hospital is fighting has to do with expert witnesses he and Geoffrey Fieger plan to present.
Schnelz has already ruled that the two medical experts and one combustion expert can be presented to the jury, Johnson said.
On April 8, the Michigan Court of Appeals denied the same motion for leave to appeal. The court also then denied a motion to delay the trial as the issue was debated.
Johnson called it grasping at straws.
"It is nothing more than Beaumont's attempt to do anything and everything other than being held accountable for setting this baby on fire, which has been consistent with how they've handled all of their tactics since the day of the fire," said Johnson. "They will do anything to keep this case from going to the jury."
Neither Barbara Erard of the Dickinson Wright law firm in Detroit, which handled the appeals for Beaumont, nor Keefe Brooks, the lawyer trying the case for Beaumont, returned calls.
Marcia McBrien, public information officer for the Supreme Court, said interlocutory appeals - those which occur during a trial - often are about evidentiary issues.
"Parties want to settle on an issue of evidence," she said. "They (the justices) could do a number of things."
The options range from refusing to consider the appeal to ordering a stay, or delay in the trial. The state's top court also could orderthe lower court to act in a particular manner with this decision.
Johnson said they plan to start with testimony this afternoon.
The hospital is challenging Fieger's medical experts, who contend that the fire damaged Nathan Laporte's lungs, contending instead that the lungs were already damaged from the baby's being born nearly 16 weeks prematurely. The boy, now 7, still needs a ventilator to live.
The hospital, in the legal filings, said Schnelz failed in his "gatekeeping duties" to ensure that expert opinions are valid, recognized and supported.
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