Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

Leanna Loud, 47, a nurse, wife and mother of three was awarded $7 million verdict by a jury after a doctor misdiagnosed her condition as being benign.

Loud’s doctor failed to adhere to a “degree of care and skill ordinarily exercised by medical care providers.” Because of the misdiagnosis, Loud’s cancer was allowed to advance until reaching a terminal state. Loud, who serves as a nurse at Medical University Hospital and is a member of the Air Force Reserve, continues to do so in spite of her current condition.

The malpractice lawsuit named Dr. Jeffrey Short and Charleston Radiologists as defendants in the case where Loud underwent mammography screenings in 2003 at age 35 and again in 2008 at age 39. The American Cancer society has recently recommended that women begin early mammograms at age 45.

Northwest Community Hospital has reached a $5 million settlement with a woman and her family who alleged that the treatment she received at the Arlington Heights hospital left her with brain damage.

Urmila Patel, 64, and her husband will receive the settlement as approved by Cook County Judge James N. O’Hara. Also named as defendants in the case were Northwest Community Hospital, and doctors Venkata Behara, Tina Han and Andrew Peck. Although the trial for the case was scheduled to begin this month, a settlement was approved out of court on December 30, 2015.

Court documents indicate that Urmila Patel went to the emergency room of Northwest Community Hospital on May 5, 2011. Patel was confused, progressively weakening and may have had a seizure in the ER. Testing purportedly indicated that she had a low serum sodium level.

HOUSTON, TX – Medical malpractice lawyers are used to hearing that their claims are frivolous. Lawyers are used to these types of comments, yet they go on fighting for their clients anyway. It’s their job. One attorney in Houston, Texas is fighting back, if only in words.

Kay Van Wey is a 30-year veteran of the law. She has been defending clients who have been injured by medical professionals for most of her career. She says that medical malpractice lawsuits are anything but frivolous. According to Van Wey, no lawyer worth their title would take a medical malpractice suit to court if it wasn’t one that they believed could be won. These types of cases are time consuming and expensive and it would be akin to “shooting yourself in the foot” to file a silly medical malpractice claim.

In Van Wey’s experience, one of the most costly mistakes in medicine is a failure to communicate. This miscommunication may be on the part of medical professionals or on the part of the patient. In either case, the results can have disastrous consequences. She also points out that there is now a cap on medical malpractice winnings, making it even more important to ensure that cases are sound before taking them to court.

Medical errors are now the third leading cause of death in the United States and are responsible for the deaths of more than 400,000 people each year. That is according to the Journal of Patient Safety (September 2013 – Volume 9 – Issue 3 – p 122-128).

Even with those statistics, there are those within the healthcare industry and in the legislature that still talk of those who bring so-called “frivolous lawsuits”. The whole idea makes Kay Van Wey, who has been practicing law with a focus on medical malpractice, grit her teeth. Van Wey’s specialty is representing those who have been injured or lost their lives due to medical errors, pharmaceuticals or medical devices.

On average, medical malpractice lawsuits will take between two and three years and are both expensive and extremely technical if they are to be effective. It’s a risky investment of time and money for something that ends up with the medical industry winning far more often than patients and their loved ones do.

The New York Court of Appeals recently ruled that a third party may sue a doctor at a hospital that gave a pain medication to a patient who later caused an accident in which the third party was injured.

According to documents in the case of Davis v. South Nassau Communities Hospital, Lorraine Walsh came to the South Nassau Communities Hospital emergency room on March 4, 2009 with stomach pain. A doctor at the hospital administered a heavy pain medication then soon after discharged her without advising that it was not safe for her to operate a motor vehicle while she was under the influence of the drug.

Ms. Walsh, unaware that the Dilaudid she was given could impair her ability to drive, attempted to drive herself home from the hospital. On her way, she crossed into oncoming traffic. Walsh’s vehicle struck the vehicle of Edward Davis who suffered injuries as the result of the accident. Davis filed suit against the hospital and the attending physician for medical malpractice, alleging that the hospital and doctor had been negligent in having failed to warn Walsh of the dangers of driving while under the influence of Dilaudid.

A man from Walnut, Iowa who had his leg amputated in 2012 has been awarded $90,000 in a medical malpractice suit last Thursday.

Court records indicate that Tony Bailey had been seeking damages from Jennie Edmundson Hospital, Emergency Physicians of Western Iowa and Dr. Steven Feldhaus of Heart, Lung and Vascular Surgery after Bailey had gone to Jennie Edmundson with severe pain in his lower left leg in January of 2012.

Bailey was treated at the emergency room, and then Feldhaus performed surgery. Complications arose, and his leg was amputated below the knee in March 2012.

It seems hard to believe that any doctor could be allowed to make the same malpractice mistake over and over again. However, that is exactly what one doctor is facing now that nearly 300 people have accused the cardiologist with implantation of pacemakers or defibrillators when they were medically unnecessary.

Hundreds of claims are being filed against Dr. Arvind Gandhi and other practitioners at Cardiology Associates of Northwest Indiana. It could take the courts years to unwind the charges and it may change the amount of monies that are paid to the Indiana Patient’s Compensation Fund that covers malpractice claims beyond the insurance that doctors already have in place. The fund covers anything above and beyond the initial $250,000 and up to the statutory cap in place of $1.25.

On December 8th, a Lake Superior Court rendered a ruling against Dr. Gandhi, awarding plaintiff Shannon Greer $450,000 in connection to the death of husband, Ken Greer, who died after the doctor treated him for an infected pacemaker.

In a rare instance in the state of Wisconsin, two large medical malpractice claims have been paid. The settlements came, however, after significant legal hurdles.

In Wisconsin, because of laws that are designed to limit who can sue for malpractice and how much they can collect if their case is won, it can be hard for anyone in the state to find a lawyer willing to take a malpractice case. Any case that is over $1 million dollars is backed by a state funded insurance fund of $1.2 billion dollars. Such laws can make it very frustrating for patients and their families.

The first case involves the estate of a woman who died after a doctor placed a breathing tube down her esophagus and then refused to remove it. After a car accident in 2011, Colleen Daniels, 56, died because a doctor at Calumet Medical Center in Chilton refused to remove a breathing tube from her esophagus. Paramedics and other medical personnel pleaded with the doctor in the emergency room but to no avail.