Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice News

We are looking at a birth injury case in Rhode Island which has given us occasion to look at medical malpractice verdicts and settlements in Rhode Island.  This is just for general information.

• 2019, Rhode Island: $6,000,000 Settlement. This is just a tragic maternal death. A 21-year-old woman was expecting her first child. Her prenatal course was normal, and she arrived at the hospital to deliver her child a week after the due date. Her labor and delivery team planned for her to undergo cervical ripening by administering Misoprostol before inducing labor. However, Misoprostol was not approved for cervical ripening and there could be potential for serious complications to occur. A first-year resident gave the first dose of Misoprostol to the woman. At that time, the attending physician, who was not employed by the hospital, was at home but available via telephone. The woman’s contraction patterns became more frequent and intense shortly after receiving Misoprostol. The attending physician told the resident that she could only give Misoprostol if the contractions became irregular and infrequently. Despite the woman’s contractions being more frequent and consistent, the resident administered a second dose. The woman’s uterus contracted intensely. Fetal bradycardia developed and her cervix enlarged rapidly. Her cervix and uterus tore during the delivery. The baby was successfully resuscitated. However, the cervical and uterine tears caused a significant post-partum hemorrhage. The labor and delivery team attempted to save her, but she died from shock and multi-organ failure. Her son thankfully survived without any residual injuries. The woman’s family alleged that the hospital failed to properly oversee their resident and the resident negligently administered a second dose of Misoprostol. They claim that the woman would have survived had there been no second dose. The case would eventually settle for $6,000,000.
• 2019, Rhode Island: $36,330,000 Verdict. A 58-year-old woman visited a hospital with back pain and a recent MRSA skin infection. During her second visit, an MRI revealed signs of an infection. However, the radiologist interpreted the MRI as normal. She returned two days later, with sepsis. The woman was hospitalized for an extended period because the hospital staff failed to diagnose and treat her infection. She ultimately underwent amputations to both her legs below-the-knee and eight fingers. The woman also suffered respiratory failure, kidney failure, and a heart attack that disrupted her circulation to her brain. The jury awarded $36,330,000.

Nike has just signed their first professional athlete with cerebral palsy, cross-country runner Justin Gallegos. They signed the University of Oregon junior to a three-year contract.  A moving video posted on YouTube shows the exact moment that he had received the news, which was on World Cerebral Palsy Day. The announcement caught Justin by surprise, as he was finishing up a race.  It was a great moment for people with cerebral palsy and their families and, obviously, a nice piece of marketing for Nike.  I feel like I’m being a little manipulated by this story and I still have an urge to run out and buy some Nikes.

Justin’s Story

Throughout his young life, Gallegos overcame significant adversity because of his condition. He learned to walk at 2 years old, with the help of a walker. However, physical therapy helped improve his stride well enough that he did not need it by the time he reached Kindergarten. Gallegos initially wanted to join his high school’s football team, but his father Brent persuaded him to join the cross-country team instead. Brent and Justin spoke to his high school’s cross-country coaches Darren James and Larry David about possibly joining the team. Brent assured both coaches that their son could run three miles needed for a cross-country race, and Justin would have a strong work ethic.

Medical errors can seriously affect patients. While mistakes made may not affect health outcomes, sometimes fatal results may occur. A Johns Hopkins study discovered that over 250,000 people die in the United States each year because of medical errors. This makes it the third-leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer. One of the medical errors that are harming patients pertains to medical record documentation. Below are a few examples of how mistakes in entering medical records can cause real injuries to people.

A Young Florida Woman with Headaches

A 19-year-old Florida woman received metaphorical headaches from blatant errors in her medical record. Because of a chronic illness she has, she visits many medical specialists. As a result, she and her mother always request her medical records after each visit. This allows them to keep track of her medical records in the same place. If it were not for her constantly requesting her medical records, she might not have been able to catch these mistakes in time for mistreatment or misdiagnosis. After a visit to a woman’s health clinic in 2016, she requested her records as she usually did. However, there was something peculiar about the records she received. There was a note in the record saying that she had two children. It noted that one was still alive, and the other one died shortly after birth. According to the dates associated with that note, she would have had to have given birth to the first child at age 13. This made little sense, as she had never been pregnant. It was also not the first mistake either, as a previous record erroneously noted that she had diabetes. She did not find out about that specific mistake in her records until a doctor had asked her questions about her blood sugar. It was only after her appointment that she found the records that note this error. Unfortunately for the woman, trying to remove the pregnancies she never had from the record was difficult. She called the doctor’s office, notifying them that she has no children and has never been pregnant before. The assistant on the other end kept insisting that she was wrong and that the records were accurate. This person also insisted this pregnancy would not have been on record if she did not notify the doctor’s office about it. According to a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, this is not an uncommon response. Doctors do not want to admit their mistakes, out of fear of being sued for medical malpractice.

If you or a loved one are taking valsartan, you may or may not know about the recent recalls or lawsuits involving it. All of them involve valsartan-products manufactured in China by the pharmaceutical company Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical (ZHP). They all note that ZHP-manufactured valsartan contains N-nitrodimethylamine (NDMA), which groups, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), categorized as a potential carcinogen.

Valsartan Worldwide Recalls

ZHP-manufactured Valsartan could be found in various countries throughout the world. The relatively low manufacturing costs in China made it attractive for countries such as the United States to import it. While these generic drugs may be cheaper to make in China, there are fewer regulations that ensure the safe manufacture of these drugs. This is the tradeoff you get when buying some generic drug imports. Because of the discovery of NDMA in ZHP-manufactured valsartan, the European Union, Taiwan, Canada, the United States, and South Korea announced successive recalls in July 2018.

After a twelve year lawsuit (which includes a mistrial and appeals), the verdict is in. The estate of a thirty-nine-year-old man has been awarded $1.45 million in punitive damages.

The man, a paraplegic because of a shooting as a teenager, presented to a hospital in 1999, complaining of abdominal pain, protracted constipation, and vomiting. He was given pain medication, underwent an enema, and discharged. He returned the next day with severe abdominal pain after having vomited blood all night. Despite lab work which indicated that he was critically ill, the hospital discharged him. The man died several hours later, of peritonitis and a ruptured peptic ulcer.

The hospital, two physicians, a physician’s assistant, and three nurses were sued, accused of failing to pay proper attention to the man’s symptoms and the blood test results which indicated the severity of his illness. The hospital was further accused of “patient dumping,” the illegal practice of turning away an uninsured or under-insured person in need of emergency care. The lawsuit claimed that the man, who had a criminal record, was told that the police would be called if he returned to the hospital.

Suit was recently filed in the Superior Court in Hartford, Connecticut, alleging that a pediatrician failed to diagnose bacterial meningitis, leading the loss of a young boy’s eyesight.

The details here are so sad. The lawsuit claims that the doctor dismissed the boy’s severe headache, instead of sending him to the emergency room where a spinal tap would have been done and the meningitis would have been diagnosed. Tragically, the boy fell into a month-long coma, suffering severe brain damage along with the blindness, the suit claims.

These kinds of failure to diagnose claims are so sad because the illness could have been so easily prevented had the proper diagnostic tests been done. Instead, the boy’s complaints were disregarded and quickly brushed off. Too often, the severity of injury in meningitis cases is the result of medical malpractice. These claims usually involve an infection from a delay in diagnosis or failure to properly treat the meningitis to stop the infection. Too many doctors chalk up meningitis as simply a headache or a simple fever. Misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis of bacterial meningitis is of great concern as early diagnosis of bacterial meningitis and treatment is key to prevent permanent damage such as brain damage, hearing loss, seizures, intracranial pressure, decreased intelligence, kidney damage, amputation, or death.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals issued an opinion on its relatively new certificate of merit rule in Crawford v. Kavanaugh. Maryland has a similar rule and this opinion is a cautionary tale for both Tennessee and Maryland malpractice lawyers. The lesson: don’t take a malpractice case unless you know how to handle it.

In Crawford, the defendant doctor performed a cystoscopy, retrograde pyelogram, and a brush biopsy on a woman’s ureter. The purpose of this procedure is typically to diagnose transitional cell carcinoma, a cancer of the urinary system. The doctor believed the woman had atypical urothelial cells. To combat this, the doctor performed a uretectomy and ureteroneocystostomy. The woman had an infection and other complications. Another doctor treating the woman noticed she had a bowel obstruction. The woman had to undergo another surgery.

Clearly, this is an awful thing in human terms but not a major injury in the medical malpractice milieu. The woman needed “many additional weeks” in the hospital and “many months of recuperation and rehabilitation.” Again, I don’t want to minimize her suffering. This is a tragedy if it happens to someone I care about. But that does not mean it is a good malpractice case. What is my point? This is the kind of case taken by maybe an otherwise good lawyer who does not regularly handle malpractice cases. Typically, experienced malpractice lawyers don’t take a case like this and won’t make these mistakes.