A medical malpractice lawsuit filed by a patient against Long Island Jewish Medical Center-Schneider Children’s Hospital was dismissed, when the Court ruled that the “mere hope of [a] patient, that depositions might uncover existence of evidence necessary to defeat summary judgment …was insufficient to delay summary judgment determination, where expert’s affidavit demonstrated that defendants did not depart from good and accepted medical practice and treatment was not proximate cause of alleged injuries…” Indeed the Court reasoned that the patient did not make any showing of the existence of facts necessary to oppose summary judgment that were exclusively within defendants’ knowledge and as a result would not exercise the drastic remedy of striking the defendant’s answer absent a clear showing that its failure to comply with discovery demands was willful or contumacious.
