Nall & Miller partner Mark Lefkow recently won a motion to dismiss for a correctional healthcare client in a wrongful death action.  The facts underlying the case took place on a jail mental health ward.  An inmate was killed by his cellmate, and the inmate’s surviving relative claimed that the jail mental healthcare provider was liable for the inmate’s death because it allegedly failed to fill out certain paperwork relating to the cellmate.  Mr. Lefkow moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim.  He argued that Plaintiff’s Complaint was an attempted end-run around Georgia’s medical malpractice affidavit requirement and that the healthcare provider had no duty to warn of the cellmate’s violent propensity because the jail corrections staff already knew of his violent nature.  Plaintiff responded and claimed that she was only alleging a failure to perform a ministerial act, such that an expert affidavit was not required.  Plaintiff simultaneously moved for an award of attorneys’ fees, arguing that the motion to dismiss was frivolous.  The Fulton County Superior Court granted the motion to dismiss and denied Plaintiff’s motion for attorneys’ fees.  The Court held that the complaint was “an attack on professional medical judgment and no amount of re-packaging or re-branding can change this.”  The Court also found that Plaintiff’s failure to warn claim lacked merit because Defendant’s “alleged failure to deliver a form that would have contained less information as to [the cellmate]’s threat level than the Sheriff’s Office personnel already knew cannot reasonably be said to have been a proximate cause of [the inmate]’s tragic death….The same reasoning supports another basis for dismissal: [Defendant]’s well-founded claim that it had no duty to warn Sheriff’s officials about something they already knew.”