This medical-negligence/wrongful-death case resulting from the tragic death of Formeka Ball. Ms. Ball was admitted to the River Oaks Hospital Emergency Room complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath that started earlier that morning. After she died, Plaintiff Patricia Ball, Ms. Ball’s mother and the administratrix of her estate, sued River Oaks.
Defendants challenged Plaintiff’s experts, Dr. Todd A. Parker and Dr. Ronald H. Wharton.
Emergency Medicine Expert Witness
Todd Allen Parker is a board-certified emergency-medicine physician and an attending physician. He is an editor and chapter author of a major Emergency Medicine board review textbook published by the American Academy of Emergency Medicine.
Cardiology Expert Witness
Ronald Howard Wharton is board certified in cardiovascular disease, completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiovascular disease, and is an associate professor of cardiology at the Zucker School of Medicine of Hofstra University in New York.
He is also an attending cardiologist at a hospital in Manhasset, New
York.
Discussion by the Court
Defendants mostly accepted their qualifications but said that their testimony is unreliable and thus inadmissible under Federal Rule of Evidence 702.
Parker and Wharton offered similar core opinions. Though Ball was given a troponin test in the ER to determine whether she was having a heart attack, they believe she should have received a second troponin test after more observation. Had that test been done, they believe it would have detected the need for additional treatment and that she would not have died from cardiac arrest later that night.
1. Speculative and Conclusory Opinions
Both Parker and Wharton offered opinions on the standard of care, breach, and causation. According to Defendants, Parker and Wharton failed “to take into account facts established by the family members’ depositions” regarding the onset of symptoms and have “no autopsy, no abnormal EKG, and no abnormal laboratory testing which factually supports the experts’ opinions.”
Parker’s initial report indicated that Ball “presented to the ED with a history & physical that is a ‘textbook’ case of how cardiac ischemia presents.” He then described that history and those symptoms, including Ball’s score on a clinical guideline (the HEART score and Heart pathway).
Parker also conducted a differential diagnosis, ruling in cardiac arrest and ruling out other causes of her symptoms. The Court found the methodology sufficiently reliable to meet Plaintiff’s burden under Rule 702.
According to Defendants, Parker and Wharton missed evidence and had no autopsy to consider. Neither is dispositive. Because Plaintiff met Rule 702’s burden, Defendants’ other factual arguments go to weight.
2. Wharton’s Qualifications
According to Wharton, Ball would have survived if given treatment, including “medications and reperfusion therapy (either percutaneous coronary intervention or bypass surgery).”
Defendants said that Wharton is unqualified to give this opinion because he is neither an interventional cardiologist nor a cardiovascular surgeon.
Even assuming he did not currently perform the procedures he noted, Defendants have not explained why a cardiologist with his knowledge, skill, experience, training, and education would lack the expertise to explain how heart attacks are treated.
Defendants next complained that Wharton lacked the qualifications to agree with the coroner’s finding that cardiac arrest caused the death.
This was a new argument. While Wharton addressed the issue again in his new affidavit, his original report noted the coroner’s finding and stated that “more likely than not, Ball died from complications of an acute myocardial infarction.” Thus, Defendants could have initially argued that Wharton needed to be a pathologist to testify regarding the cause of death. That argument would have allowed Plaintiff an opportunity to respond.
3. Failure to Identify Specific Life-Saving Treatment
After arguing that Wharton is unqualified to address the specific procedures he believes would have saved Ball, Defendants fault Plaintiff’s experts for failing to “establish that timely diagnosis would have led to an identified course of treatment and that treatment would more likely than not, have prevented death within the relevant time window.”
But the experts’ initial reports did not mention specific treatment, so Defendants could have faulted the experts for this omission in their opening brief. The argument is therefore untimely.
Held
The Court denied the Defendants’ motion to strike the testimony of Todd Parker and Ronald Wharton.
Key Takeaway
The Court should make certain that an expert, whether basing testimony upon professional studies or personal experience, employs in the courtroom the same level of intellectual rigor that characterizes the practice of an expert in the relevant field.
Case Details:
| Case Caption: | Ball V. River Oaks Hospital, LLC |
| Docket Number: | 3:24cv632 |
| Court Name: | United States District Court, Mississippi Southern |
| Order Date: | June 11, 2026 |
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