An Atlanta jury has awarded $5 million in damages to the family of a new mother who drowned in a bathtub at Gwinnett Medical Center.
The lawsuit alleged that nurses should have checked on Wendy Wyckstandt, 34, and should have realized that she was too weak to shower without assistance.
The patient was being treated for postpartum high blood pressure, and she collapsed in a bathtub while taking a shower. She was found by her mother and she died a day later. The family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the hospital’s parent company, Gwinnett Health System, in 2002.
The plaintiffs attorneys alleged the hospital altered medical records and kept evidence from them in what stretched into a six-year legal battle.
Legal Analysis: A case of hospital negligence and then the cover up.