Milner v. Regents of U.C.
Plaintiff and appellant, Larry D. Milner, Sr. (Plaintiff) sued defendant and respondent, The Regents of the University of California (the Regents) on medical malpractice theories arising out of the death of his 29-year-old son, Larry Milner, Jr. ("Larry Jr."), who was hospitalized at the Regents' University of California San Diego Medical Center and being treated for a variety of medical problems. Since Plaintiff was representing himself in the trial court and was out of the country on military deployment after he filed his complaint, the court granted several continuances of the trial date. The month before trial, the court denied a summary judgment motion by the Regents, after Plaintiff supplied a declaration about causation of harm from a retained expert medical witness.
At trial call, the Regents obtained judgment on their motion for nonsuit, following the trial court's granting of their motion in limine that disallowed any late designation of Plaintiff's expert medical witness. (Code Civ. Proc., § 2034.720; all further statutory references are to the Code of Civil Procedure unless otherwise specified.) Without that expert being designated, Plaintiff could not address at trial the element of causation of injury from the alleged medical negligence. (Jennings v. Palomar Pomerado Health Systems, Inc. (2003) 114 Cal.App.4th 1108, 1118 (Jennings).)
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