Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Last month, California parents filed a lawsuit on behalf of their infant daughter who lost parts of all four limbs after the Emergency Room personnel at Catholic Healthcare West negligently delayed their treatment of their young daughter. The infant girl presented to the hospital with clear signs and symptoms of Streptococcus A, a bacterial infection that had invaded her blood and organs, persistent fever, skin discoloration and weakness. Emergency room physicians kept the infant waiting 5+ hours despite the fact that she visibly sicker and the parents begged health care providers to treat their daughter. Finally, the father forced his way into the emergency room triage area and demanded help. That help came too late. The child was emergently flown to Stanford University for lifesaving care. Unfortunately, due to the extent of her illness, the child suffered amputations of both feet, her left hand and part of her right hand. She now faces intensive physical therapy and a lifetime of health costs, including daily nursing care and assistance in performing basic daily activities of life, including dressing herself, feeding herself, the ability to ambulate on her own, the ability to brush her teeth, etc. The parents allege in the lawsuit that the hospital negligently staffed, operated and supervised the emergency room, thereby creating an unsafe environment in which overcrowding occurred and the hospital did not have a procedure in place that allowed for critically ill patients to receive immediately necessary care and treatment. As a result, negligence occurred.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Last week, a Montana jury awarded a widow and her four children $1.7 million in a lawsuit against the widow’s husband’s primary care provider and his clinic following the husband’s death in 2005. At trial, the Plaintiffs alleged that the husband, age 42, had presented to the internal medicine physician with a complaint of chest pain. The doctor negligently misdiagnosed the pain as a torn muscle, instead of what it was, pain caused by a leaky heart valve. In essence, the physician failed to rule out one of the most potentially devastating causes of the chest pain, choosing instead to believe that the pain was caused by a non-life threatening condition, and failing to refer the man to a specialist for follow up. The man was given pain medication and discharged home. The Plaintiffs, at trial, argued that the doctor had an obligation to refer their husband/father to a heart specialist for further workup as a result of the chest pain. In essence, they argued that the decedent essentially slipped through the cracks at the clinic. After being discharged, the decedent went home. One year later, he died because his valve failed. Had a received a replacement heart valve, plaintiff’s experts, cardiologists, testified that he would have survived. Heart valve replacement surgery is used to repair or replace diseased heart valves — the parts of the hearts that open up enough so that blood can flow through. Then the valves close, keeping blood from flowing backwards into the heart. Surgery to replace these valves is relatively common today and can sometimes be laparoscopically with a valve from another part of your body or a synthetic one.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Unfortunately, one of the more common type of cases that our office handles is one in which a pharmacy or pharmacist has mistakenly provided a customer with the wrong medication, causing that customer to suffer a serious reaction leading to hospitalization and injury. All too often, we patients take for granted that we hand a pharmacist or pharmacist’s technician our prescription form (or it is called in from a doctor’s office), that prescription will be filled properly. Unfortunately, and especially with the large chain pharmacies, prescription error cases are not isolated events anymore. In fact, as attorneys for the injured, we are often able to use evidence of prior errors to show a jury that although a particular corporation knew that its pharmacists were committing errors when filling a prescription, it failed to remedy the situation or install safeguards to prevent further occurrences. It should be pointed out, however, that although the liability seems cut and dry when a patient ends up with the wrong medication, these pharmacies defend these cases vigorously. Often times, the pharmacists claim that they did not misfill the prescription; and instead, argue that the patient or family member caring for the patient mixed up prescriptions, sometimes with their own. To combat these defenses, our attorneys get the pharmacies to admit that they carried the “misfilled” medication at the time that it was put in our client’s bottle and that at the same time they were filling our client’s prescription they were filling other patients’ prescriptions for the medication that mistakenly ended up in our client’s bottles.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

The daughter of a Michigan woman recently settled a case against a nursing home and hospital for a confidential amount after her father died following a long battle with sepsis, precipitated by the development of bed sores while she was being cared for by health care providers in the two facilities. The decedent, Jessie Butler, was 85 at the time of her admission to the hospital for a total knee replacement. According to the complaint, at the time of his admission, Mrs. Butler was active and had no bed sores / skin ulcers / pressure ulcers. Mrs. Butler remained at the hospital for about a month and half. She was subsequently discharged to a nursing home. By the time of her discharge, Mrs. Butler had developed several skin ulcers on her backside. Despite treatments at the nursing home, those ulcers progressed to a Stage 3 and Stage 4 grade (out of 4). She was subsequently readmitted to the hospital where she underwent multiple surgeries in an attempt to treat the sores. Despite these treatments, Mrs. Butler developed sepsis and died about 3 months letter. Mrs. Butler’s daughter subsequently sued both institutions alleging that her mother should never have been allowed to develop bed sores, should have been properly treated for the sores and should not have died.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

An Indiana jury recently awarded a 37 year old woman $875,000 for permanent brain damage she suffered after a physician misdiagnosed her elevated blood pressure as nothing more than a side effect of medications she was currently taking. Shortly thereafter, the plaintiff presented to a hospital and was diagnosed as having had a stroke that resulted in right hemi-paralysis and aphasia, injuries that left her unable to work. In her case, the Plaintiff alleged that she presented to her gastroenterologist for a post-operative consultation. At the time of the examination, the plaintiff’s blood pressure was elevated, and she reported that she had recently experienced dizziness, nosebleeds, blurred vision and tingling in her face and upper extremity. The gastroenterologist dismissed these signs as a side effect of the medications she was then taking. That evening, the plaintiff suffered a stroke. The plaintiff sued the physician, alleging that he should have referred her for an immediate evaluation at a hospital or with an internal medicine specialist in light of her high risk of stroke.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

In March 2010, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld a trial court’s decision not to give a Plaintiff a spoliation instruction after it was discovered that a surgeon had failed to dictate a key operative note. The case arose out of a patient who came into a hospital Emergency Room complaining of abdominal pain. A surgeon was consulted. The surgeon diagnosed the patient with gallbladder disease and possible small bowel obstruction. Subsequent tests did not confirm the obstruction, radiographically. The surgeon opted performed surgery to remove the gallbladder. During the surgeon, the surgeon testified that he saw some dilitation (swelling) of the small bowel but did not observe clear signs of an obstruction. Following the surgery, the patient experienced complications that necessitated 2 additional surgeries and the removal of a large percentage of the small bowl, all because of an undiagnosed obstruction. The patient subsequently sued the surgeon for initially failing to diagnose the obstruction and causing the additional complications and surgeries. During discovery, the patient sought the production of the operative report, a report that hospital policies mandated be created after each procedure. No such report was ever located. As a result, the plaintiff sought a spoliation instruction, arguing that she was entitled to an adverse inference (i.e., permitting the jury to infer that the report contained unfavorable language against the surgeon). The plaintiff argued that the lack of a report made it nearly impossible for her expert’s to evaluate the surgeon’s actions. The trial court refused to give that instruction.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

In March 2010, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld a trial court’s decision not to give a Plaintiff a spoliation instruction after it was discovered that a surgeon had failed to dictate a key operative note. The case arose out of a patient who came into a hospital Emergency Room complaining of abdominal pain. A surgeon was consulted. The surgeon diagnosed the patient with gallbladder disease and possible small bowel obstruction. Subsequent tests did not confirm the obstruction, radiographically. The surgeon opted performed surgery to remove the gallbladder. During the surgeon, the surgeon testified that he saw some dilitation (swelling) of the small bowel but did not observe clear signs of an obstruction. Following the surgery, the patient experienced complications that necessitated 2 additional surgeries and the removal of a large percentage of the small bowl, all because of an undiagnosed obstruction. The patient subsequently sued the surgeon for initially failing to diagnose the obstruction and causing the additional complications and surgeries. During discovery, the patient sought the production of the operative report, a report that hospital policies mandated be created after each procedure. No such report was ever located. As a result, the plaintiff sought a spoliation instruction, arguing that she was entitled to an adverse inference (i.e., permitting the jury to infer that the report contained unfavorable language against the surgeon). The plaintiff argued that the lack of a report made it nearly impossible for her expert’s to evaluate the surgeon’s actions. The trial court refused to give that instruction.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Last week, an Allegany County jury returned a $1.5 million verdict against a local cardiologist after the death of Robert Kaiser, a carpenter, following a routine catheterization procedure. On June 17, 2005, Mr. Kaiser had been admitted to the hospital following a minor heart attack. Three days later, the cardiologist, Dr. Kulkarni, performed a catheterization procedure. A catheterization is a medical procedure used to diagnosed and treat certain heart conditions. During the procedure, a flexible tube called a catheter is inserted in to the patient’s arm, groin or neck and passed through the blood vessels all the way to the heart. Through the catheter the doctor can then run several diagnostic tests such as coronary angiogram in which dye is inserted into your bloodstream and travels to the heart to see if the dye gets blocked anywhere. In this case, following the procedure, Mr. Kaiser’s wife was told that her husband’s heart was strong and that he had done well in surgery. Moments later, Mr. Kaiser’s blood pressure dropped precipitiously and life-saving measures were ordered. Ultimately, Mr. Kaiser died and the Plaintiff alleged that Dr. Kulkarni had negligently punctured a vessel while performing the catheterization, causing Mr. Kaiser to suffer significant internal bleeding that went unnoticed until it was too late. Jurors in the case deliberated for 3 1/2 hours before returning the verdict, an award that included damages for Mr. Kaiser’s pain and suffering, his medical bills/funeral expenses and the loss of services to his wife.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Yesterday, a Pennsylvania jury awarded $1.2 million to the wife of man who died following being negligently discharged to home with a life threatening condition. 55 year old Michael Scarpa, a retired railroad worker, died just 2 days after he was discharged from Tyler Memorial Hospital. Mr. Scarpa had arrived at TMH with complaints of chest pains and vomiting over a three day period. Despite these complaints, Mr. Scarpa’s doctors told him to take some cough medicine, get some rest and see his primary care physician in a few days. 2 days later he died. At autopsy, the medical examiner showed that Mr. Scarpa had an ulcerated and perforated esophagus that allowed food to enter the area around his lungs known as the pleural cavity. This led to his blood becoming poisoned and ultimately his death.

An esophageal perforation is a essentially a hole in the esophagus that allows food to pass out of the esophagus into the mediastinum, the surrounding area in the chest. This usually results in the mediastinum becoming infected. Esophageal perforations typically occur during a medical procedure, violent vomiting, trauma or injury to the chest, swallowing a foreign object or extremely caustic chemical, a tumor or a ulcerated area on the esophagus. When a perforation occurs, pain is the most common symptom. Other symptoms include difficulty swallowing, chest pain or breathing problems. Patients are also often found to have a fever (sign of infection), elevated breathing rate, rapid heart rate, low blood pressure, neck pain or air bubles under skin if perforation is near the top of the esophagus. Physicians generally order x-rays or CT scans of the chest in order to determine if there is a perforation.

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 Posted on January 01, 2017 in Medical Malpractice

Earlier this week, attorneys for the family of Thomas Murphy won a $1.44 million verdict against a physician at St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Maryland after a jury determined that the physician failed to properly diagnose Mr. Murphy with sepsis upon his presentation to the hospital. Instead, the physician erroneously diagnosed him with an infection, and thereby only treated him with broad-spectrum antibiotics. Mr. Murphy’s family argued that had he been properly and timely treated for sepsis upon his admission to the hospital, he would have survived. Mr. Murphy died just one day after his hospital admission.

Sepsis – the body’s ultimate response to a bacterial infection — is characterized by severe reaction of the body’s organs to the foreign bacteria and/or death. Sepsis is also referred to as systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS). Although sepsis often results from the widespread invasion of bacteria into a patient’s bloodstream, this invasion is not essential for the development of severe sepsis since local infection/inflammation can also cause distant organ dysfunction and blood pressure irregularities. Some of the common places in the body where an infection might start include the skin (celluitis), the lungs (bacterial pneumonia), liver, gall bladder, lining of the brain (meningitis), the bloodstream, the bones, the bowel, or the kidneys. For hospitalized patients, common sources of infections include bedsores (decubitus ulcers), surgical drains, intravenous lines, or surgical wounds. Unfortunately, bacteria live and breed in hospitalized settings, and thus, many healthy people who have suffered an injury requiring a drain, or IV lines or open ports into their blood stream often contract an infection that turns into sepsis.

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