A Minnesota woman is appealing to the state Supreme Court a judge’s dismissal of her civil lawsuit against Trinity Hospital.

Tessa Bride, the daughter of John L. Pelkey, alleges that Trinity and doctors there were negligent in treating her father in 2015. Bride filed suit in 2017 against the hospital, former Trinity neurosurgeons Dr. Marc Eichler and Dr. Kim Koo, and other unidentified doctors.

Judge Stacy Louser dismissed the suit against all parties without prejudice on July 13.

In her complaint, Bride states that her father was treated there on Sept. 11, 2015, and that medical negligence resulted in her father’s paralysis and eventual death on Feb. 2, 2017. Bride alleged that the doctors did not adequately medicate, monitor, diagnose and treat her father and that medical personnel failed to make sure he was safe from falls, didn’t adequately protect his neck, and didn’t perform decompressive surgery or train and instruct the staff who cared for Pelkey. Trinity and lawyers for the doctors denied the allegations and stated that Pelkey was appropriately treated.

A lawyer for Koo argues that the dismissal of the case should stand because Bride’s lawyer failed to submit an expert affidavit making a case for her claim within three months of filing the malpractice suit, as was required. Bride’s lawyer argues that the malpractice suit should be allowed to proceed and that the state law was intended to weed out frivolous cases that aren’t substantiated by an expert rather than cases like Bride’s. Bride’s attorneys filed the expert affidavit some six months after filing the lawsuit. Her lawyer wrote that the delay was caused by different factors, such as being appointed as executrix of her father’s estate, the difficulty in obtaining medical records and her belief that the defendants had waived objection to the timing of the filing of the expert affidavit.

“This Court has not been stripped of discretion to allow a meritorious case to proceed when the abbreviated delay in serving the expert affidavit was due to the myriad of factors identified here,” wrote Bride’s attorney, E. Drew Britcher.

The appeal is scheduled to be heard Feb. 26.