C&P Defeats Motion for Summary Judgment in Medical Malpractice Case Over Medical Procedure Performed 16 Years Ago

In an important preliminary victory for our client Sarah Ramey—who was seriously injured in a botched urologic procedure performed in 2003—D.C. Superior Court Judge Shana Frost Matini has issued a 16-page opinion denying summary judgment on the medical malpractice claims that Ms. Ramey filed sixteen years after the procedure. The case, Ramey v. Dunne, becomes one of the few to survive a summary-judgment motion when more than a decade has passed between the alleged negligence and the resulting lawsuit. Applying the District’s discovery rule, Judge Matini’s detailed analysis pointed to the conflicting information that Ms. Ramey received from the defendant and many other doctors who tried, for years, to figure out what was causing her severe symptoms. Ramey’s experience is detailed in her memoir, The Lady’s Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness, published by Doubleday in March 2020.

Partner and lead trial counsel Tim Clinton called the ruling “a major victory for our client and patients like her, who experience complex symptoms that present to her physicians as a medical mystery.” “For essentially all of her adult life,” Clinton added, “Ms. Ramey has been trying to learn what caused her debilitating medical conditions. Unfortunately, she got answers only recently. We are proud to represent her in this case against her surgeon and look forward to showing the jury what happened during her surgery in 2003 and how she has suffered as a result.”

More details about the case are available in our summary-judgment brief, written by Clinton and partner Greg Lipper. 

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Clinton & Peed has long represented victims in personal injury, medical malpractice, and civil rights cases. Tim Clinton has been included in Washington D.C’s SuperLawyers magazine every year since 2016 (and among its list of “Rising Stars” for the two years before that), and was named one of the Irish Legal 100 in 2019 and 2020.