Medical Malpractice

September 1, 2009

Medical Malpractice Victims Awarded $11M

Two teenage sisters have been awarded $11 million in a malpractice lawsuit against a prominent New York pediatrician who failed to take steps to prevent the girls from being repeatedly sexually assaulted by their half-brother when they were children in Lake Placid.

An eight-member jury in U.S. District Court ruled against Dr. Patricia Monroe and her workplace, Adirondack Internal Medicine and Pediatric, ending a federal case rooted in horrific abuse dating back more than nine years.

The older sister, now 18, will receive $6 million, the 16-year-old younger sister $5 million, according to a news release issued by Albany attorneys Pamela Nichols and Stephen Coffey, who represented the victims. He noted they were “never offered a dime” to the settle the case, which dates to 2002.

August 31, 2009

Nursing Home Medical Malpractice: Staff Dispensed 10 times Correct Dosage

by Dr. Shezad Malik

On Oct. 18, 2005, plaintiff Alvin Greenberg, 58, disabled, suffered from an overdose of Zyprexa. He had been administered the drug by the staff at the Green Acres Rehabilitation and Nursing Center, in Wyndmoor, where he was a resident; the order for the anti-psychotic medication had been called into the facility by his treating physician three days earlier.

Greenberg’s daughter and power-of-attorney, Alicia Greenberg, sued Green Acres, Melanio Aguirre, Greenberg’s attending physician, and Aguirre’s practice, claiming negligence, in order to recover personal injury damages. Prior to trial Greenberg settled with Green Acres for an undisclosed amount but Green Acres still remained in the action as a defendant.

Plaintiff’s counsel alleged that Greenberg was given 10 times the proper amount of Zyprexa, causing Greenberg to require an emergency room admission for Zyprexa toxicity. According to counsel, when Aguirre spoke to the nurse by telephone on Oct. 15, it wasn’t clear whether Aguirre directed the nurse to give Greenberg 25 mg or 2.5 mg of the medication. Plaintiff’s counsel asserted that both Aguirre and the nursing home were liable for the overdose because they didn’t ensure that Greenberg receive the proper dosage of the medication he required.

August 24, 2009

Denton Texas Jury says Doctor Failed to Diagnose Woman’s Cancer

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A Denton County jury has awarded the family of a Denton woman who died of misdiagnosed cancer $3.5 million, one of the largest awards in Denton since the tort law reform of 2003.

Civil suit law, however, will cut that amount to $1.5 million to be shared by her husband, her two young children and her father after attorney fees.

Melissa Hendricks was 33 when she noticed a marble-sized bump on the right crown of her head, according to court documents.

Hendricks waited about a month, then visited Highland Family Medical Center in Highland Village on Oct. 14, 2002. She saw Dr. Stephen Glaser, who told her it was a sebaceous cyst, which is a nonmalignant lesion, according to the documents.

August 24, 2009

Undetected Cervical Cancer led to Bowel Obstructions

by Dr. Shezad Malik

In November 2005, plaintiff Lee Arnette Zapel, 56, president of a medical supplies company, was diagnosed with cervical cancer during a hysterectomy. The exploratory surgery was due to abdominal pain that she experienced for months leading up to the surgery, which resulted in numerous tests and hospitalizations, including a change in her OB-GYN the previous month.

Zapel, who received annual Pap tests, alleged that PCA Southeast, a Columbia [Tenn]-based pathology lab, failed to detect cervical abnormalities in her slides in 2003 and 2004.

Zapel sued the lab for medical malpractice. The defendant stipulated to negligence for misrepresenting the 2004 Pap test, but contested the 2003 test. The cervical abnormalities that the defendant failed to detect in Zapel’s 2003 and 2004 Pap test slides were high-grade lesions, which were an early form of Stage 1 cancer, according to plaintiffs’ counsel.

Had the defendant detected the lesions, a cervical biopsy would have been ordered to reveal the cancer and a hysterectomy would have been performed, it was alleged. The hysterectomy would have rendered a 100 percent cure that would have precluded any need for chemo-radiation treatment that Zapel eventually underwent, opined the plaintiffs’ gynecological oncologist.

August 23, 2009

Mis Diagnosis of Epidural Abscess Leads to Paralysis

by Dr. Shezad Malik

Sheila Matthews, a Naples mother of three, walked into NCH North Naples Hospital’s emergency room in March 2005 in extreme pain.

Over the years, the 55-year-old retired nurse had suffered from diabetes, peripheral neuropathy and bipolar disorder. On a scale of one to 10, she told doctors, this was a nine. The pain grew as doctors tried to determine what was wrong.

“She’s screaming, she’s in so much pain,” Matthews’ attorney, Nancy La Vista of West Palm Beach, told a Collier Circuit Court jury during opening statements Aug. 13.

Six days later, Matthews would become a quadriplegic.

August 20, 2009

Court Overturns $53 M Awarded in Wrongful Death Nursing Home Case

by Dr. Shezad Malik

The state Court of Appeals has overturned a $53 million damage award to the family of an Albuquerque woman who died in a nursing home.

The court ordered a new trial. The daughter of 78-year Barbara Barber filed a lawsuit alleging her mother died in December 2004 of gastrointestinal bleeding that went untreated by the nursing home staff.

In tossing out the jury verdict, the appeals court said a district judge was wrong in a pretrial finding that ManorCare Inc., a Toledo, Ohio-based company, was the employer of the nursing home’s staff. The court said there was conflicting evidence on that issue. ManorCare contended that a subsidiary company owned and operated the Albuquerque nursing home, which was sold in 2005.

August 13, 2009

Routine Complication From Surgery Wrongful Death Lawsuit Filed

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A hospital patient suffers excruciating pain from what turns out to be a routine complication from elective surgery.

As her condition deteriorates, she and her family plead to see the doctor. But no doctor examines her until the next morning, when she goes into shock, is rushed into intensive care and dies.

Then, after her death, the hospital deletes portions of the woman’s medical file in what the woman’s family says is an attempt to cover up its horrendous mistakes.

August 11, 2009

Hospital Staff Wrongly Declared Infant Dead Malpractice Claim Filed

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A WV Kanawha County couple say both they and their newborn baby were traumatized permanently when staff at a Charleston hospital informed them the baby died only to later discover he was in fact alive.

Charleston Area Medical Center, Pediatrix Medical Group and Dr. Davangere M. Jayaram are named as co-defendants in medical malpractice suit filed by Carmela and Joseph Newhouse of Elkview. In their complaint filed July 28 in Kanawha Circuit Court, the Newhouses allege Jayaram, and staff from Pediatrix and CAMC misinformed them of the death of their son, Camren, who is now permanently injured after his premature removal from life-support systems.

August 7, 2009

Report: Texas Dental Board is Full of Errors According to Audit

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A new report blasts the Texas agency that oversees dentists and hygienists, finding that its databases are replete with sloppy errors, that information reported to the public is flawed and that its new $118,000 enforcement system is “not fully functional or reliable.”

The Texas State Board of Dental Examiners plans to buy a new automated system for $644,000 to address some of the problems found in the audit released this week.

A skeptical-sounding report by the State Auditor’s Office noted that “Given the difficulties the agency has had in the past in designing, implementing, and maintaining automated systems, it will be imperative that the agency use a systematic process for installing, customizing, testing, and implementing the new system to ensure that the existing problems do not occur in the new system.”

August 5, 2009

$1.8 M Judgment in Wrong Diagnosis Medical Malpractice Claim

by Dr. Shezad Malik

A $1.8 million medical malpractice claim was paid last week following a jury’s verdict in late June that a doctor misdiagnosed a 25-year-old woman’s heart condition — causing her to need a heart transplant.

In a trial in Newport News Circuit Court, a jury awarded to Leslie Thorne a $4 million verdict against Dr. David Glick, who works for a group of emergency room doctors who once provided services at Mary Immaculate Hospital.

The judgment was later reduced to $1.8 million because of caps on medical damages in Virginia, said William E. Artz, Thorne’s Arlington attorney. An insurance firm paid the claim, he said.

Thorne initially sued three doctors — Glick, as well as William Hunter and Andrew B. Cole, both of Peninsula Emergency Physicians — claiming they were all negligent.