Background
Karen Johnson sued spine surgeon Abubakar Atiq Durrani and his practice, Center for Advanced Spine Technologies, alleging injuries from two 2012 spinal-fusion surgeries. She asserted negligence and several other claims, including lack of informed consent, battery, fraud, and consumer-protection violations. Her case was tried jointly with another patient’s case.
The jury found the defendants liable only for negligence in Johnson’s case, identifying misplaced screws and an unwarranted risk-benefit assessment for surgery. It awarded $1.195 million, later reduced by the trial court to $520,000. The court also awarded Johnson prejudgment interest and $75,000 in attorney fees. The defendants sought a new trial and challenged those additional awards.
The Court’s Holding
The First District affirmed the denial of a new trial. Although the trial court improperly allowed a neuroradiologist to testify that Durrani breached the surgical standard of care by failing to prepare an operative note, the error was harmless: the jury’s negligence findings rested on the misplaced screws and the decision to operate, not the missing operative note.
The court also held that other asserted errors did not warrant reversal. References to Durrani’s absence from trial were generally permissible and noninflammatory, any flaw in the adverse-inference instruction was harmless in context, and the record did not permit review of the joint-trial ruling because the defendants failed to supply the other plaintiff’s claims and allegations. The court upheld prejudgment interest because Johnson had made settlement demands. But it reversed the attorney-fee award: Johnson prevailed only on negligence, and no statute, contract, punitive-damages award, or bad-faith finding authorized fees.
Key Takeaways
- An erroneous expert-opinion ruling is harmless when the verdict shows the jury did not rely on the challenged testimony.
- An appellant challenging joinder must provide a record sufficient to assess the claims and common issues in both joined cases.
- Under Ohio’s American Rule, a negligence verdict alone does not support attorney fees without a recognized exception.
Why It Matters
The decision leaves Johnson’s reduced negligence recovery and prejudgment-interest award intact while eliminating $75,000 in fees. It also reinforces that medical experts’ qualifications are assessed issue by issue, rather than solely by specialty title, and that appellate review can fail when the appellant omits the records necessary to evaluate a claimed procedural error.