In December 2018, Jeff Brown presented the oral arguments on behalf of all defendants in a case of first impression before the Kansas Supreme Court. The case was brought by the wife and estate of a patient who had suffered heart complications following knee replacement surgery that allegedly caused his 2014 death. The District Court granted the separate motions to dismiss all defendants. Plaintiffs appealed asserting that the District Court clerk improperly rejected their attempted electronic filing of the petition on the last possible date before the expiration of the statute of limitations. In the ruling issued on April 19, 2019 the Kansas Supreme Court unanimously ruled that District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the defendants was proper. The Kansas Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs failed to present evidence that an electronic filing issue caused the suit to be lodged one day after the statute of limitations had expired. The decision has since led to subsequent new rules from the Kansas Supreme Court relating electronic filing. This ruling was also addressed in an article appearing in the June 2018 Kansas Bar Journal and an April 19, 2019 news story published by Law 360.
