Earnest Edwin Gilchrist v. Juan T. Aristorenas, M.D

This appeal arises from a medical malpractice claim. The defendant physician performed an operation on the plaintiff patient. Complications occurred during the surgery; as a result, the patient required several more procedures and spent approximately three weeks in the hospital. The patient hired an attorney, who obtained an opinion letter from a physician expert, in which the expert opined that the defendant physician breached the standard of care during the patient’s initial operation. After securing the expert opinion, the patient filed this lawsuit against the defendant physician for medical malpractice. After the case had been pending for several years, the attorney for the defendant physician took the deposition of the patient’s expert. At the deposition, the patient’s expert changed his opinion, and testified that he believed that the defendant physician’s care of the patient was not below the standard of care. The next day, the defendant physician filed a motion for summary judgment. Several months later, the patient filed a motion under Tenn. R. Civ. P. 56.07 requesting a continuance of the summary judgment motion because he had been unable to engage another expert. The trial court denied the plaintiff’s motion for a continuance and granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant physician. The patient appeals. On appeal, the plaintiff argues that the trial court erred in denying his request to continue the motion for summary judgment. We affirm, finding no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s denial of the request for a continuance, and thus in the grant of summary judgment in the defendant’s favor.