‘I Don’t See How [Your Evidence] Proves That’: Judges Press Parties on Timeline and Drug Use in Negligent-Hiring Appeal

Accounts of the events that led to a patient death in a medical-malpractice appeal clashed at oral argument on Feb. 14. The panel, comprised of Chief Judge Amanda Mercier, Judge Brian Rickman and Presiding Judge Christopher McFadden was tasked with sorting through the competing narratives. At the end of the hearing, McFadden gave both sides a week to brief the issue.

“Changing this law is going to change not just staffing companies, but how physicians are able to practice, if they have issues in their personal life, how pilots practice despite having issues in their personal lives,” said defendant-appellee counsel Sheila Kazemian of Hall Booth Smith. “That’s why the law was written [and] is interpreted in this way to show that there has to be an indication that she was under the influence on that day. You can’t speculate that her background with the Alabama Board of Nursing had anything to do with the care she was providing.”