By Cherrie Anne E. Villahermosa
Variety News Staff

THE Superior Court has granted a doctor’s motion to dismiss the case filed against her by a couple over the death of their baby.
Associate Judge David A. Wiseman, in his order on Friday granting Dr. Norma S. Ada’s motion, said Wei Hua Peng and Langyue Huang, parents of Tiebao Huang, failed to make the factual connection between Ada’s attendance of the baby’s delivery and any supposed professional duty of care that she owed to the baby and to the baby’s parents.
Ada’s lawyer, Robert T. Torres, yesterday said there is no claim for negligence against his client.
“You have to make a claim under your complaint. The court’s decision is correct. There is no claim against Dr. Ada because there was no doctor-patient relationship established. No legal claim was alleged against Dr. Ada,” Torres said.
He said there are three elements to support a claim for negligence — breach of duty, damages and damages caused by breach of duty.
“Dr. Ada will continue to provide quality service to the CNMI,”Torres said.
Ada, Dr. Nasser Chahmirzadi, the Department of Public Health and the Commonwealth Health Center were sued by the couple for damages on two main causes of action, negligence and gross negligence.
According to the complaint, the defendants’ individual and collective negligence led to the wrongful death of the baby shortly after the baby was born.
The complaint stated that Ada was among those who attended the baby when the baby died later.
But Wiseman said the couple failed to support a claim for medical malpractice negligence against Ada.
“Here the only facts pleaded by the plaintiffs which personally connect Dr. Ada to baby Huang prior to the baby’s sustaining its injuries are those found in paragraphs 6 and 31 (of the complaint),” Wiseman said.
The judge said the sole material fact in paragraph 6 alleges that Ada “attended the “allegedly flawed” delivery of baby Huang, while paragraph 31 “imposes a duty upon Ada and Dr. Nasser Chahmirzadi “as the medical doctors present and/or involved in the delivery, assigned to and responsible for the care, life and well-being of the plaintiffs as admitted patients.”
Paragraph 31 stated that Ada and Chahmirzadi had a professional duty to provide care that did not fall below the accepted standard of care in their respective fields.
Wiseman said the plaintiffs argue that Ada’s attendance of the birth of baby Huang created a physician-patient duty between Ada and the plaintiffs.
But the judge said case law suggests that action more than mere attendance must be present to attach a professional duty to an individual.
“A person upon whom a duty is imposed must affirmatively undertake or accept the care of another, directly or by implication,” Wiseman said.
He said the plaintiffs have failed to establish this connection between them and Ada.
According to Wiseman, the plaintiffs did not demonstrate that Ada undertook any action toward establishing a relationship with the plaintiffs which would require her to exercise a standard of professional care commensurate with reasonable prudent medical professional.
The couple also “failed to cite facts which even remotely tie Ada’s presence or status as attending physician to the events surrounding baby Huang’s injuries,” the judge said.
“Because the plaintiffs are unable to establish any physician-patient relationship between Dr. Ada and the plaintiffs by their direct allegations, the court will certainly not accept the conclusory allegations of paragraph 31 as true,” Wiseman said.