A Decatur County trial court granted the motions of the Hospital Authority of the City of Bainbridge and Christine Sass to dismiss a professional malpractice suit brought by Genell and George Cogland. The trial court also granted the defendants’ motion to strike the Coglands’ response to the motions as well as a new affidavit from their medical expert. On appeal, the Coglands argue that the trial court erred when it granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss and when it granted the defendants’ motion to strike the Coglands’ response and their expert’s new affidavit. We find no error and affirm. The relevant facts are undisputed. On April 1, 2004, Genell Cogland and her husband George filed a complaint alleging professional malpractice at Memorial Hospital by Christine Sass, a therapist employed there by the Hospital Authority. The complaint alleged that after superior labrum anterior posterior “SLAP” surgery on Mrs. Cogland’s shoulder in January 2002, she received physical therapy at the Hospital Authority, and that in April 2002, in the course of such therapy, Sass rotated Mrs. Cogland’s shoulder “too aggressively, causing excessive and unnecessary pain . . . and tearing the area of the SLAP repair.”
Attached to the Coglands’ complaint was an affidavit by George Lee Cross III, M. D., averring that he was a physician licensed to practice in Georgia and certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery; that he was “knowledgeable as to the standard of care applicable to physical therapy provided after surgery” for SLAP repair; that he had reviewed the medical records concerning Mrs. Cogland’s original SLAP repair surgery, her early 2002 physical therapy, and two subsequent operations in August and November 2002; that “in his opinion,” any external rotation of Mrs. Cogland’s shoulder “should have been performed very gently, without causing pain to the patient, because of the danger of tearing the labrum which had been repaired”; and that it was “his opinion that the negligence of the physical therapist in using too aggressive external rotation . . . caused the damage which necessitated the subsequent repair operations.”
