Plaintiff Bernadette F. Johnson brought this complaint against! defendant Ramesh Srivastava, M.D., alleging professional negligence! in his surgical treatment of certain skin lesions on plaintiff’s hand and! face. The complaint also contains a claim for battery because, plain-! tiff alleges, defendant performed an unauthorized procedure on her! face. The trial court granted partial summary judgment to defendant on the professional negligence claim and we granted plaintiff’s appli-j cation for interlocutory appeal (Case No. A91A0230). The trial courlj denied defendant’s motion for summary judgment on the battery claim and defendant filed a cross-appeal (Case No. A91A0231).
Case No. A91A0230
1. In support of his motion for summary judgment defendanj filed his own affidavit asserting his medical treatment of plaintiff complied with the appropriate standard of the medical profession. Ii opposition to defendant’s motion plaintiff filed the affidavit of an es pert witness asserting that defendant’s treatment deviated from tl *697 appropriate standard of care in certain particulars. The affiant stated that his opinions were based on a review of the complaint, plaintiff’s affidavit, certain medical records, correspondence between the parties and photographs of plaintiff. Although copies of the medical records and photographs were attached to the affidavit, they were not certified or sworn and were not a part of the record in the case. The trial court granted summary judgment on the professional negligence claim on the ground that plaintiff’s expert’s affidavit was insufficient to create a genuine issue of fact.
OCGA § 9-11-56 (e) requires sworn or certified copies of all documents referred to in an affidavit to be attached to the affidavit. An expert affidavit is insufficient to oppose a motion for summary judgment if the documents on which the affiant relies in forming his opinions are not certified or sworn, even if unsworn copies are attached to the affidavit.
Crawford v. Phillips,
Relying upon
Jones v. Rodzewicz,
Case No. A91A0231
2. Plaintiff’s claim for battery is based upon her allegation that *698 defendant performed a procedure on her face to which she did not consent. Defendant argues he is entitled to summary judgment on the battery claim because the plaintiff signed a consent form authorizing him to perform an “excision biopsy” on the lesion on her face. According to plaintiff, however, defendant did not perform the excision biopsy to which she consented but, instead, unnecessarily excised a mass from her face without first performing a biopsy to determine whether the lesion was malignant. The trial court denied the motion on the ground that the evidence presents a factual dispute as to the meaning and scope of the term “excision biopsy.”
Defendant admitted at the hearing on his motion that the evidence concerning the meaning of the term “excision biopsy” is in dispute. Nevertheless, defendant argues that pursuant to the statute governing consent to treatment at the time this surgery was performed, OCGA § 31-9-6 (d), all that was required is that the procedure be described in “general terms” and because plaintiff consented to surgical treatment of the lesion on her face she thereby consented to the procedure defendant actually performed. According to defendant, a patient’s consent to a general course of treatment precludes an action for battery for the treatment actually undertaken. However, those cases cited by defendant are distinguishable from the case at hand. In
Holbrook v. Schatten,
The issue in dispute in this case is whether the language of th<
*699
consent form authorized defendant to perform only a limited excision for purposes of biopsy or the complete excision of the tissue in question. We cannot say as a matter of law that “the evidence shows clearly and palpably that the jury could reasonably draw but one conclusion.”
McCray v. Hunter,
Judgments affirmed.
