Labissoniere v. Gaylord Hospital, Inc.

Citations

• 199 Conn. App. 265

Syllabus

The plaintiffs, coexecutors of the estate of R, sought to recover damages for the alleged medical malpractice of the defendants, a hospital, a physician practice group, and several individual physicians. The plain- tiffs, pursuant to statute (§ 52-190a), appended to their complaint an opinion letter authored by M, a physician and general surgeon who was board certified in surgery; the individual physicians were board certified in internal medicine. The plaintiffs alleged in their complaint that the physicians' diagnosis and postsurgical treatment of R was within the medical specialty of surgery, that the physicians were acting outside the scope of their specialty and, therefore, M could be considered a ''similar health care provider'' as defined by statute (§ 52-184c (c)). The defendants filed motions to dismiss in which they claimed, inter alia, that the trial court lacked personal jurisdiction over them because M was not a ''similar health care provider'' to them as defined by § 52- 184c (c). The physician practice group also claimed that the trial court lacked subject matter jurisdiction because it was not a legal entity at the time R received treatment. The trial court granted the motions to dismiss on the ground that it lacked personal jurisdiction over the defendants and rendered judgment thereon, from which the plaintiffs appealed to this court. Held: 1. The trial court did not lack subject matter jurisdiction over the claim against the physician practice group; it was irrelevant that the physician practice group was not a legal entity at the time that R was treated, as it was a legal entity at the time the action was brought against it and, therefore, the court had subject matter jurisdiction. 2. The trial court properly dismissed the plaintiffs' action for lack of personal jurisdiction; the plaintiffs' unsupported conclusory allegation that the individual physicians were acting outside the scope of their specialty of internal medicine was insufficient to es