CHEYENNE - The Wyoming Supreme Court has reinstated a woman's medical malpractice lawsuit against Johnson County Healthcare Center and several medical workers over her mother's death from a stoke in March 1999.

A district court judge had granted summary judgment to the defendants, which were Johnson County Healthcare Center (JCHC), Medical Associates of Johnson County, Dr. Mark Schueler, Dr. Lawrence Kirven, registered nurse Jennifer Sather, and licensed practical nurse Vicki Blakely.

District Judge John Brackley ruled that the plaintiff, Leslie McMackin, had failed to prove that any treatment would have been more likely than not to have prevented the death of her mother, Harriette Brown. The judge ruled that there were no facts in dispute that could help McMackin meet her burden of proof.

But the justices disagreed, in an opinion written by Chief Justice William Hill, ruling that there was an issue of fact with respect to whether the defendants' actions caused a "loss of chance" for Brown to survive the stroke.

Brown was a resident of JCHC-owned Amie Holt Care Center in Buffalo from 1990 until her death in March 1999. Sather and Blakely were her nurses at the time of her stroke.

The night of March 7, 1999, a JCHC employee told Sather that Brown was having difficulty talking and was crying. Sather examined the woman about 9 p.m. and found that her speech was slurred, she had slight facial drooping on the left side, and her left eye was closed.

"McMackin contends that there should have been an immediate medical response to her mother's condition, but there was not," states the Supreme Court ruling.

Sather checked on Brown periodically until 4:30 a.m. March 8, when she called Kirven, who told Sather to wait for Brown's treating physician, Schueler, to arrive.

At 8 a.m. March 8, Blakely examined Brown and saw that her symptoms remained. Schueler arrived about 9 a.m., determined that Brown had suffered a stroke, and arranged to have her taken to the hospital, where she died on March 21 as a result of the stroke.

For McMackin to defeat the defendants' motion for a summary judgment, she needed to prove that the defendants departed from the accepted standard of medical care, and that their doing so caused the injury or damage to the patient.

The Supreme Court ruling focused on the "loss of chance" doctrine, which means that a physician's failure to treat a patient caused the patient to lose the chance for survival.

The sides in the case are in dispute over whether the defendants' inaction caused Brown to lose the chance to survive the stroke, the Supreme Court ruled, so the defendants are not entitled to a summary judgment.

Justice Larry Lehman broke ranks with his colleagues and filed a dissenting opinion, arguing that the district court's summary judgment ruling should have been affirmed.

The district judge's ruling was based on his finding, based on expert testimony in the case, that the 12-hour wait between the time medical personnel first noticed Brown's symptoms and when she was taken to the hospital did not contribute to her death.

Lehman contended that "McMackin failed to present competent and admissible evidence that any treatment more likely than not would have prevented the massive hemorrhage in Ms. Brown's brain, which resulted in her death."