“Just tell ‘em you’re a doctor. … Booooiiinnnggggg. … Bounced out like a SuperBall on a hot, dry pavement.” (Dr. Wes, Mar. 19).
Posts Tagged ‘medical’
$11.7 M verdict against bystander doctor
A team of doctors at North Fulton Medical Center worked on Josh Coleman’s back surgery in 2003. Dr. Frank Puhalovich had a minor role: “he was only in the operating room for about 10 minutes making sure a technician properly hooked up a monitor that tracks nerve impulses along the spinal [cord] through electrodes attached to Coleman’s head and feet.” But after Puhalovich left, during surgery, the alarm went off: attorneys blame the surgeons’ failure to respond to the alarm in a timely fashion for Coleman’s paralysis. Coleman sued everyone involved, and all the doctors settled, except Puhalovich. So Coleman proceeded to trial against Puhalovich, blamed him also, and a jury awarded $11.7 million. The press coverage gives no indication what the theory of liability is against Puhalovich.
Joshua Coleman, sitting in a wheelchair next to his attorneys, Bill Stone and David Boone, smiled as the verdict was announced after the two-week civil trial.
“Josh is high as a kite right now,” Stone said. “He’s going to have a great weekend.”
(Beth Warren, “Paralyzed man awarded $11.7 million”, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mar. 24).
Update: Kevin, MD post with clever title Shotgun yields a jackpot.
One Big Happy Family
No, this case isn’t going to get messy: in 2004, a Long Island couple went to a fertility clinic to help them get pregnant with a biological child. Apparently, the clinic botched the procedure by using the wrong sperm (Oops!); the couple figured it out when they noticed that the child was black and they weren’t.
So they sued the clinic for malpractice and infliction of emotional distress. (Just for good measure, they sued their obstetrician, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual fertilization; the court dismissed that claim. Gee, I wonder why medical malpractice insurance rates are so high.) The court rejected the emotional distress claim, ruling that (as most courts do) a baby being born is not an injury to the parents, but it allowed the malpractice claim to proceed.
Speaking of emotional distress, the judge handling the case quoted the parents as saying things every child wants to hear from her parents:
“[W]e are reminded of this terrible mistake each and every time we look at her.”
and
“We are conscious of and distressed by this mistake each and every time we appear in public.”
“I want my doctor to use defensive medicine”
“That’s why docs have insurance…It won’t hurt him at all”
The artificiality of the jury
In this second-hand blog account, a plaintiffs’ attorney seeking damages for a car accident strikes a doctor and two nurses, but mistakenly fails to strike a juror who isn’t completely medically ignorant. The results are entertaining, as an 11-1 straw poll turns into a 0-12 defense verdict. (Via Kevin MD.)
Navarro case settles
We wrote about the Navarro case and its $217 million verdict a few times, including today. The insurance company has announced that the case was settled, though has not yet released any details. On information and belief, one should be able to divine those details at a later date from the public Florida reporting system, and we’ll try to track those figures down in a few months.
(Update, August 2007: details of settlement.)
Fieger files: $30M medical malpractice verdict tossed in South Carolina
Geoffrey Fieger (May 5, 2006; Mar. 24, 2005; Mar. 13, 2005; Aug. 31, 2004; etc.) got some favorable rulings in a South Carolina medical malpractice case. Fieger claims that the hospital fatally overdosed the plaintiff’s dead husband; the hospital argues that, as an autopsy showed, he died of a rare heart condition. Because the hospital only had copies of the original records, and not the original records themselves, Fieger persuaded the judge to instruct the jury that the defendant hospital had engaged in a cover-up and that the jury could draw an adverse inference; moreover, the jury wasn’t told about a side-deal Fieger cut with a co-defendant that apparently resulted in that defendant making only a token defense at trial in exchange for a limitation of damages, a sequence that a non-settling co-defendant doctor protested futilely as Fieger directed his closing argument at her, calling her a killer and a liar. Fieger asked for $55 million including punitives, the jury returned $30 million in “compensatory” damages but the judge threw the whole verdict out as obviously the product of passion or prejudice. Fieger says he looks forward to retrying the case. The case was brought before South Carolina capped malpractice awards. (John Monk, “$30 million verdict overturned”, The State, Mar. 9; John Monk, “$30 Million awarded in death of physician”, The State, Aug. 12).
“You know, doc. It’s just business”
A lawyer comes to the emergency room complaining that he can’t see out of his left eye. The one who examines him is the physician who blogs at Fingers and Tubes in Every Orifice:
“What do you do for a living?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“I’m an attorney,” he proudly responded. “You’ve probably seen my ads on the highways.”
“Yes, yes. A fair settlement is no accident.” (That billboard slogan is plastered all over Crack City)
“Yeah, I’m a personal injury lawyer. I have no problems telling doctors that. I get better care that way, actually. Makes you guys more careful around me.”
“Yes, I know you very well, Mr. Cochran. You were the plaintiff attorney accusing me of being a baby killer, remember?!”
Pausing briefly to let him absorb the full irony of the situation, I continued, “As to being more careful around you, all that means is that you’ll have a bigger medical bill because of all the unnecessary tests and consultations, but I personally treat everyone the same regardless of the circumstances.”
You’ll want to see what happens in the rest of the story (Fingers and Tubes In Every Orifice, Jan. 2).
Rex Carr med-mal case fails
In 1999, Maria Storm had a mole on her right shoulder that was rubbing against her bra strap; Dr. Patrick Zimmerman removed it at her request. The mole did not have an irregular shape or color. Four years later, she was diagnosed with a fatal melanoma on a different part of her body (“Louis Dehner, M.D., a pathologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, testified that the mole Zimmermann removed was not the primary spot of the melanoma”), and her family sought to blame her death on Zimmerman, seeking $10.9 million. (Zimmerman biopsies 30% of the moles he sees, and less than 1% of the ones he orders for testing are malignant, suggesting he’s already practicing heavily defensively.) A Madison County jury rejected attorney Rex Carr’s pleas; Carr (Feb. 6; Dec. 6, 2005; Nov. 6, 2005; Dec. 23, 2004; May 4, 2004; POL Dec. 28, 2004) says he’ll appeal. (Steve Horrell, “No award in med-mal case”, Edwardsville Intelligencer, Jan. 31; Leah Thorsen, “Doctor sued over cancer death defends his prognosis of mole”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 30; Steve Gonzalez, “Collinsville physician cleared in Madison County med mal trial”, Madison County Record, Jan. 31).