![\"Florida](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778503751_527_Florida-Supreme-Court-150x150.jpg\")
Florida\u2019s \u201clong-arm\u201d statute authorizes an Orlando woman to sue the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and her former New York doctors for alleged malpractice, her attorney assured the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.<\/p>\nCourt examines reach of Florida\u2019s long-arm statute in cancer malpractice case<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s \u201clong-arm\u201d statute authorizes an Orlando woman to sue the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and her former New York doctors for alleged malpractice, her attorney assured the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWords matter,\u201d West Palm Beach attorney Kara Rockenbach Link told justices. \u201cAnd the Florida Legislature chose broad words, they\u2019re not narrow, they\u2019re not limiting, and they don\u2019t have exceptions.\u201d<\/p>\n
A central issue in\u00a0Janet Thorpe v. Memorial Sloan Kettering, et al,\u00a0is whether medical records the doctors forwarded to the woman\u2019s Florida physicians meet the statutory definition of \u201cproducts, materials, or things processed, serviced, or manufactured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice John Couriel told Link he wasn\u2019t convinced.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour brief was excellent, but I wouldn\u2019t say it was \u2018well-manufactured,\u2019 right?\u2019\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould I say my brief was well-manufactured?\u201d Link said. \u201cIt was processed; it was definitely processed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, the Sixth District Court of Appeal disagreed and upheld the trial judge\u2019s dismissal.<\/p>\n
The patient, Jennifer Palmer, had a tumor removed from her thigh at Memorial Sloan-Kettering when she lived in New York between 2012 and 2015, records show.<\/p>\n
Palmer died in 2021 at age 34 after moving back to Orlando for further treatment, the records show. Her mother was added to the suit as a representative of Palmer\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n
The New York surgeon and a radiologist failed to detect the cancer that spread to Palmer\u2019s bones and waited weeks after an MRI to schedule a follow-up visit, the plaintiffs alleged.<\/p>\n
The Sixth DCA found, among other things, that the plaintiffs failed to establish a \u201ctemporal\u201d connection to the New York treatment. Link reminded justices on Thursday that the temporal issue wasn\u2019t raised by the trial judge.<\/p>\n
The statute\u2019s definition of a temporal connection, \u201cat or about the time of injury,\u201d is a broad phrase, Link said. She reminded the justices that it\u2019s not possible to pin down the exact day a patient contracts cancer.<\/p>\n
Medical \u201creports\u201d don\u2019t fit the long-arm statute definition, the Sixth DCA determined.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile a report is certainly a \u2018thing,\u2019 the writing of a report does not constitute \u2018processing,\u2019 \u2018servicing,\u2019 or \u2018manufacturing\u2019 the report,\u201d the opinion states. \u201cThe ordinary meaning of \u2018processing,\u2019 \u2018servicing,\u2019 or \u2018manufacturing,\u2019 a \u2018thing\u2019 does not include simply writing a written document.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, the Sixth DCA asked justices to resolve a conflict with a 2001 First DCA opinion,\u00a0Dean v. Jones, that involved medical reports transmitted to Florida by an Alabama physician. The First DCA reached a different finding regarding the reports, but the Sixth DCA stressed that the facts of the two cases \u201care very different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dean\u00a0held that writing a report and sending it to Florida \u201cis precisely what section 48.193(1)(a)6.b. contemplates,\u201d Link stressed in her brief.<\/p>\n
But on Thursday, Chief Justice Carlos Mu\u00f1iz told Link he shared the other justices\u2019 concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t really say that authors \u2018process\u2019 their books,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did process my brief,\u201d Link reiterated.<\/p>\n
Muniz was skeptical.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you go home and tell your family you \u2018processed\u2019 your brief?\u201d<\/p>\n
Mu\u00f1iz and Justice Adam Tanenbaum said the wording in the long-arm statute appeared to be geared more toward \u201cproduct liability.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gerard Collins, an Orlando attorney who represents the defendants, agreed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe statute connotes physical, tangible handling of products for manufacturing,\u201d he said. \u201cIt does not involve an opinion or thoughts from a doctor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Court examines reach of Florida\u2019s long-arm statute in cancer malpractice case Florida\u2019s \u201clong-arm\u201d statute authorizes an Orlando woman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-266527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}