Articles Posted in In The News

Two women died on the operating table at Harborview Medical Center in Washington state. Their families are suing the surgeon and the hospital itself, claiming medical malpractice.

According to reports that have been released, Reba Golden was building an addition on her home in Honduras. She fell two floors to the ground, hurting her back in the accident. She returned to Seattle to undergo spinal surgery in 2007. During the surgery, she suffered with blood clots and bleeding and did not make it off of the table.

A second patient, Joan Bryant, had been involved in a car accident in 1990. Some 19 years later, she sought relief from a spinal surgeon in Seattle. She, too, never made it off of the table. She bled out before the surgery was completed.

Last week, a jury in Alabama returned a $20 million verdict against a local rehabilitation hospital.

According to reports, an Etowah County jury determined that a woman had received an overdose of opiates while a patient at HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital. Even though the opiates were non-prescription, the overdose caused the woman to suffer with decreased neurological and cognitive abilities. The overdose occurred in July of 2011.

The woman, Doris Green, passed away on October 22, 2011. Her death was a proximate result of a reaction to the opiates she was given at the rehab facility.

On May 11, 2016, an appeals court in Pennsylvania upheld a $3 million verdict against Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. The subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson was found liable in a birth injury case filed by a mother who had taken Topamax during her pregnancy.

Parents Kelly and Brian Anderson sued the pharmaceutical company in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia county. Their daughter was born in 2008 with a cleft lip and palate. In the case, the jury found that Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. failed to warn medical professionals of the risk of birth injuries during the first trimester of pregnancy when mothers took Topamax.

The pharmaceutical company fought the ruling in appeals court and lost again. At appeal, the company argued that they were unable to change labeling without approval from the FDA. The three-judge panel disagreed, telling the pharmaceutical giant that they could have warned medical professionals without changing the label.

Harvey Hospital is being sued by an estate administrator who is claiming that the hospital was negligent and caused a relative’s death.

The independent executor of Gwendolyn Davis’ estate, Lynn M. Hubbard, filed  the lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court on May 4. Named in the lawsuit is Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey. The suit alleges that the hospital was negligent in failing to prevent Davis from falling.

According to the papers filed, Davis was admitted to the hospital’s emergency room on December 27, 2008. She had been complaining of seeing spots and had garbled speech. Because of her condition and the side effects of medication she was taking for Parkinson disease, the suit alleges that she was at an increased risk for falling.

Melissa Rivers, daughter of the late Joan Rivers, has settled the medical malpractice lawsuit she filed after her mother’s death in 2014.

Rivers had sued Yorksville Endoscopy Center in New York. It was at the center that her mother had been undergoing surgery when she went into cardiac arrest. The elder Rivers died a week later.

Melissa Rivers released a statement: “Moving forward, my focus will be to ensure that no one ever has to go through what my mother, [her son] Cooper and I went through and I will work towards ensuring higher safety standards in out-patient surgical clinics. I want to express my personal gratitude to my legal team for their wise counsel and prompt resolution of this case.”

Russel Farnsworth was fired from his job for using too many sick days. Every morning, when he could, he went to work with a pounding headache. He worked through the pain while sitting at his desk, only to stand and feel as though he had pinched nerves in his back.

According to Farnsworth, he began to struggle with the intense back pains after he had surgery at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in 2009. His complaints fell on deaf ears at UCLA. The hospital claimed he had received appropriate care.

Farnsworth says that he came down with an infection after the surgery, and began to experience headaches and back pain. Two years post-surgery, he discovered that the doctor had not placed a spacer in his back during surgery. It took Farnsworth five years to receive medical records from the hospital. The hospital declined to explain to the man why his records were delayed.

The University of Pennsylvania has been hit with a $44.1 million verdict after a court found that hospital staff failed to recognize a patient’s adverse reaction to heparin, an anti-coagulant medication. As a result of the reaction, the female patient suffered a brain hemorrhage.

The verdict came down last month, with the jury finding the attending physician 35% liable and the hospital itself 65% liable. It is the highest medical malpractice award in the state this year. It is also the highest when last year’s verdicts are taken into account.

According to a pretrial memo, doctors tested the patient’s blood for approximately a week after she had surgery. The results showed that her coagulation was moving from the low end of normal to the high end. Instead of stopping heparin at that point, doctors stopped monitoring her blood. This failure to monitor caused doctors to miss a massive bleed in the patient’s head. The patient fell into a coma.

A man in California is suing a Fremont nursing home, claiming that staff ignored his needs and withheld necessary care. According to reports, Mark Sandholdt is claiming that Windsor Country Drive Care Center did not meet his medical needs and continuously harassed him for money he didn’t owe.

The home is being sued for financial abuse, elder abuse, negligence, and negligent hiring and supervising.

Sandford was transferred to the facility after he sustained a fall. The fall resulted in surgery, and Sandford was admitted to the home for rehabilitation and physical therapy. Sandford is a diabetic who also suffers from nerve damage.

When you trust the care of an elderly loved one to a nursing home or assisted living facility, you do so with the assumption that they will be kept safe and as healthy as possible. Unfortunately, that isn’t what always happens as a family in Florida recently discovered.

On April 30, police were called to Gracewood Nursing Home on reports of an elderly man being transported to the hospital. The police were told that the man had possibly fallen victim to abuse.

According to reports, the 65-year-old man had been left outside of the home. The sun was shining brightly during the day, and the man received second-degree burns. Once he arrived at the hospital, the man went into cardiac failure and eventually passed away.

A jury recently awarded a $4 million verdict to a woman from Troy, Texas. The woman had filed suit against Noland Hospital after her father suffered a fall and died while in the care of the medical facility.

According to reports, Thomas Doster, 77, was in the care of Noland Hospital’s long-term care facility. He was found on the floor of his room in September 2007. Doster was deceased when he was located. Reviews of Doster’s medical records showed that the patient was supposed to be in restraints because he was deemed a high risk for falls.

Because Doster was not in restraints and fell as a result of not being secured properly, his daughter, Karren Hughes, filed a medical malpractice suit, alleging that the facility had breached their standard of care.