Background
Sheila Krabacher and Erin Greelish separately sued Dr. Abubakar Atiq Durrani and the Center for Advanced Spine Technologies over cervical-spine surgeries. After the plaintiffs refiled their cases in Hamilton County, the common pleas court consolidated them for trial. Both women testified that Durrani warned of grave consequences without surgery, and both alleged that the procedures were unnecessary or improperly performed.
A jury found for both plaintiffs and awarded future medical expenses, including $120,000 to Krabacher and $100,000 to Greelish. The trial court denied Durrani’s motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict and a new trial, and it awarded the plaintiffs prejudgment interest. Durrani appealed, challenging consolidation, evidentiary and instructional rulings, future-medical-damages awards, the denial of a settlement setoff, and prejudgment interest.
The Court’s Holding
The First District held that consolidating the cases was improper because the plaintiffs’ claims depended on individualized facts and presented no common question capable of uniform resolution. The error was harmless, however, because the record did not show that the limited cross-case references identified by Durrani probably affected the verdicts. The court also held that Dr. Zeeshan Tayeb’s reputation testimony was improperly admitted and that the absent-defendant instruction was erroneous, but found those errors harmless individually and cumulatively.
The court upheld the future-medical-damages awards because expert testimony established that both plaintiffs were reasonably likely to develop junctional syndrome, would require surgery, and faced costs comparable to procedures documented in the record. It also affirmed prejudgment interest, concluding that competent, credible evidence supported the trial court’s findings concerning the parties’ settlement efforts. But the court held that Durrani was entitled to a setoff under R.C. 2307.28(A) for the plaintiffs’ settlements with other tortfeasors and remanded for the trial court to resolve that setoff.
Presiding Judge Zayas concurred separately. She agreed with the court’s ultimate judgment on consolidation but rejected the majority’s reliance on Wilson v. Durrani, which she viewed as a drastic departure from the First District’s prior precedent. She concurred on the ground that, even assuming consolidation was erroneous, the error was harmless.
Key Takeaways
- Consolidating medical-malpractice cases is improper when liability turns on patient-specific facts and no material legal or factual question can be resolved uniformly.
- Improper consolidation, inadmissible testimony, and an erroneous jury instruction do not require a new trial without a showing that the jury probably would have reached a different result.
- The verdicts and prejudgment-interest awards remained intact, but the cases were remanded to account for Durrani’s statutory settlement setoff.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the distinction between identifying trial error and obtaining reversal: even multiple errors will not justify a new trial when the record shows they were harmless. It also confirms that future medical expenses may be sustained when expert testimony addresses the likely treatment and ties its expected cost to documented comparable procedures.
The separate concurrence signals continuing disagreement within the First District over the consolidation framework announced in Wilson, even though all three judges agreed that any consolidation error here did not affect the judgments.