Category Archives: Medical Malpractice

 

July 24th, 2007

Charlie Weis Loses Medical Malpractice Case

Charlie Weis has lost. The crew cut head coach of the Notre Dame football team had brought a medical malpractice case against the surgeons that had performed gastric bypass surgery on him, based on a failure to promptly diagnose and treat post-operative bleeding that had sent Weis into a coma.

The verdict was delivered today after two hours of jury deliberations, according to news accounts. The Wizard of Odds college football blog had been live-blogging the trial. This was the second trial, as the first had ended in mistrial when a juror fell ill and the defendant physicians ran to assist in full view of the rest of the jury.

Nationwide, approximately 2/3 of all malpractice verdicts favor the defendants. This occurs because, generally speaking, it is usually the most difficult of cases that go to verdict, and due to juries favoring physicians over patients according to a recent Michigan Law Review study.

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(Eric Turkewitz is a personal injury attorney in New York)

 

July 16th, 2007

Charlie Weis Medical Malpractice Retrial Now Starting

The medical malpractice trial involving Notre Dame head football coach Charlie Weis is now starting again. When we last left the Weis story on February 16th, a mistrial had been declared when a juror fell ill while Weis was on the witness stand, and the two defendant physicians rushed over to assist.

Defendants’ counsel vainly tried at that time to claim the trial should continue and that the jury had not been unfairly prejudiced by the conduct of the physicians, though I don’t know how they kept a straight face while making that argument.

The story behind the lawsuit is that Weis decided to have gastric bypass surgery in June 2002. He claims that the defendants acted negligently by failing to recognize life-threatening internal bleeding and infection two days after the surgery.

According to this AP story:

In opening statements to the jury, Weis’s lawyer, Michael Mone, said the doctors acted negligently by allowing Weis to bleed internally for 30 hours after the surgery before performing a second operation to correct the complication. Weis was in a coma for two weeks and nearly died.

But William Dailey Jr., a lawyer for Ferguson and Hodin, said internal bleeding was a well-known complication of gastric bypass surgery. Dailey said Ferguson, Hodin and several other doctors who cared for Weis believed the bleeding would stop on its own, as it does in most cases following such surgery.

Claiming a particular bad result is a “complication” of surgery, by the way, is a common defense tactic. The proper response from the plaintiff’s side is asking whether this is an avoidable complication, if proper care is exercised.

This trial, by the way, is being live-blogged by a college football blog, The Wizard of Odds (Hat tip, TortsProf).

OK, now here is the weird part: The live-blogging of the trial will come out of Suffolk Superior Court in Massachusetts. Why is that weird? Because that is the same court that Flea was live-blogging his own medical malpractice case from earlier this year.

Addendum:
7/17 — See Battle Lines Are Drawn in Day 1 (Wizard of Odds, after first day of trial).
7/18 — The Return of Weis‘ Hired Hand (plaintiff’s expert testifies it was malpractice to give Weis the blood thinner Heparin post-operatively while he was hemorrhaging) (Wizard of Odds)
7/19 — The Big Guy Takes The Stand (Wizard of Odds)
7/19 — Weis Takes Stand in Lawsuit (AP via Forbes)
7/20 — Team Weis Scores A Major Victory (Wizard of Odds)
7/20 — Doctor: Weis went against my medical advice (Boston Herald via Kevin, M.D.)
7/24 — Hodin Takes Stand, Defends Decisions (Wizard of Odds)
7/24 — Doctors not backing down against Weis in malpractice suit (ESPN)

(Eric Turkewitz is a personal injury attorney in New York)

 

July 9th, 2007

Medical Malpractice At Woodhull Hosp. Hits Daily News Front Page


“Hell at Woodhull,” blasts New York’s Daily News today from the front page of the dead tree edition. Woodhull Hospital is a public city hospital here in New York.

A 10 year old girl had died there of asthma after what appears to be spectacular mismanagement over 4 1/2 hours in the emergency department. A $3.5M jury personal injury verdict was the sad ending.

And so, while tort “reformers” race around trying to make “Pants” Pearson the reason to close the courthouse doors to legitimate claimants, the Daily News is reporting on these nuggets from the trial that recently ended on the asthmatic girl:

  • Doctors and nurses put a breathing tube down the girl’s throat without giving her proper sedatives.
  • Her hands and feet were tied to her bed.
  • After leaving her bucking and screaming for at least an hour, they improperly pulled out and reinserted her endotracheal tube, then pumped so much air into her lungs that they burst.
  • Finally, after she became unresponsive, they administered huge overdoses of an adrenaline drug to keep her heart beating.

A state Health Department investigation of the girl’s death in April 1999 also concluded that Woodhull had failed to meet “generally acceptable standards of professional practice” in its treatment of the girl.

According to the Daily News story:

A nurse who was in the room when Anna died testified that while the girl’s body was still on the bed, officials from the hospital’s risk management unit suddenly appeared and began scooping up X-rays and medical charts – several of which were never found afterward.

(Eric Turkewitz is a personal injury attorney in New York)

 

June 28th, 2007

Medical Malpractice – 175 surgical mistakes in 30 months

This comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

In one case, doctors removed a patient’s healthy thyroid after a laboratory mix-up led to an incorrect cancer diagnosis.

In another, a neurosurgeon halted a procedure after making an incision on the wrong side of the patient’s head.

In yet another, a surgeon inserted a needle into a patient’s right knee before realizing that the operation was planned for the other leg.

Those surgical misadventures are examples of the 175 errors made by hospitals and surgery centers in Pennsylvania, according to a report released Tuesday from the state’s Patient Safety Authority. The survey, the first of its kind, covered the 21/2 years that ended Dec. 31.

Much more at the link above.

(Eric Turkewitz is a personal injury attorney in New York)

 

June 14th, 2007

John Edwards Reverses Course On Medical Malpractice

John Edwards appears to have completely capitulated to the tort “reformers” that seek to close the courthouse doors to those injured by medical malpractice. In a 26-page Health Care policy statement issued today, buried on page 13, is this bit (hat tip to TortsProf):

Stop Frivolous Lawsuits: To discourage frivolous suits, Edwards will require lawyers to have an expert testify that actual malpractice has occurred before bringing a suit. There will be mandatory sanctions for lawyers who file frivolous cases, and any lawyer who files three frivolous cases will be forbidden from bringing another suit for the next 10 years. (emphasis mine)

Now Edwards is a former medical malpractice trial lawyer so he should know better. A few points need addressing:

  1. It is often impossible to prove prior to discovery that malpractice has taken place. It is one thing to require a physician’s review prior to suit, and have a doctor state that based on the available records there is a reasonable basis to proceed. That’s good practice when vetting the claim. It is another thing entirely to require that malpractice be proven before discovery, or even suit, is undertaken. This would result in the absurd situation of immunizing those doctors who have lousy records.
  2. Testify before whom? If there is no suit, there is no one to testify in front of. Does the potential defendant have to testify too, to help reconstruct events from poorly written notes? Is there a trial before the suit starts?
  3. If there must be testimony pre-suit, it requires significant additional funding, thereby granting even more immunity to the medical profession than they have now. Currently, the economics of malpractice litigation immunize the medical profession for most mistakes. Basically, it means a mini-suit before a real suit.
  4. If doctor-experts are forced to testify, and therefore disclose their identities before necessary, it will make it even more difficult for injured parties to retain experts, due to peer pressure physicians face when they become known as someone willing to testify. They also will be forced to testify based on incomplete information.
  5. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure already have sanctions in place for frivolous conduct. It’s called Rule 11.

I have no problem with sanctions for those that bring frivolous suits. And for those that bring frivolous defenses (like blaming the patient for an injury that happened while she was under anesthesia.) Frivolous claims of any kind hurt everyone concerned and should be sanctioned.

But the concept that a case must be proven before it is even started will work only to close the courthouse doors even further.

Either Edwards has completely capitulated to the money of the health care industry at the expense of the downtrodden he claims to represent, or he needs someone to proof-read the policy statements that go out under his name.