New Jersey Supreme Court Eases Affidavit of Merit Standard for Multi-Specialty Physicians in Medical Malpractice Cases

A landmark decision with widespread implications for New Jersey medical malpractice law addresses whether an Affidavit of Merit from a board-certified internal medicine physician is sufficient to defeat a motion to dismiss when the defendant doctor holds multiple specialties.

The trial judge denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss and opined that, when a physician practices multiple specialties, an Affidavit of Merit from any at-issue specialty is sufficient, in accordance with Buck v. Henry, 207 N.J. 377 (2011).

The Appellate Division reversed that decision, arguing that an Affidavit of Merit from physicians certified in each of the defendant’s specialties was required.

Ultimately, the New Jersey Supreme Court overturned the Appellate Division and reaffirmed the trial court’s ruling—an Affidavit of Merit from any specialty at issue suffices when the defendant has multiple specializations.

Obviously, this holding was based largely on the Supreme Court’s interpretation of N.J.S.A. 2A:53A-41, which requires that an Affidavit of Merit come from an “appropriate licensed person” with specialization in the relevant field of the defendant physician. Interestingly, the Supreme Court reasoned that the statute’s language “specialist or subspecialist” specifically includes the operative word, OR; thus, an expert need only share a “singular” specialty as the defendant physician.

At its core, Wiggins effectively eases a plaintiff’s burden in cases where the defendant has multiple specialties. In practice, should a defendant physician hold specialties in oncology, radiology and pediatrics, with board-certifications in same, and should the plaintiff offer an expert with a specialty in oncology, this would be sufficient under the statute to overcome a Motion to Dismiss, so long as the issue at hand involved the specialty of oncology.