New York Malpractice & Injury Lawyer Blog

According to an ex-security guard, a misdiagnosis by an emergency room physician left him a quadriplegic. The man is claiming that he is entitled to over $20 million in damages. The case has been filed against Good Samaritan Hospital by Kyrus Rogers.

According to the lawsuit, Dr. Brian Harris failed to diagnose and treat the man when he arrived at the hospital in pain. In May 2012, Rogers collapsed in his driveway. He was in good health at the time, and he was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital for assistance. Harris treated Rogers for stress and muscle aches rather than conducting any type of diagnostic imaging. Rogers was sent home with medication.

Within just 30 days of seeking treatment, Rogers’ condition worsened and he was left a quadriplegic. Rogers now lives with his mother who has become his caregiver. Although Harris was named in the original lawsuit, his name has been dropped from the case.

The state of Texas began its case against a neurosurgeon it has accused of aggravated assault. Prosecutors brought forth both medical professionals and patients in an effort to prove that neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch was negligent to the point of having committed crimes.

In the second day of proceedings, prosecutors attempted to prove that the surgeon did not simply make medical errors, but knew that he was likely to actually harm people. To do this, prosecutors questioned two patients and three doctors. One medical professional stated that fusing the lower spine was one of the easiest operations for a spinal surgeon, yet a patient of Duntsch’s woke up in pain, accusing the surgeon of failing to identify its source.

Duntsch has been incarcerated since July 2015 on charged of aggravated assault causing serious injury and causing injury to an elderly person. In fact, he has been charged with five separate counts of aggravated assault. Doctors during the proceedings called Dunstch’s work catastrophic and abnormal.

A woman and her son were awarded $53 million in a medical malpractice case. The woman was able to prove that her son was born with cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability due to negligence on the part of an Illinois hospital. A judge upheld most of the award last week.

In the original case, the woman alleged close to 20 mistakes on the part of medical staff at an Illinois hospital. Those mistakes included a failure to monitor her and her baby, follow a chain of command, perform a C-section in a timely manner, obtain accurate cord blood gases, and notice abnormalities in monitoring that would indicate distress in her baby.

The jury in the case found in favor of the family. The jury awarded the largest verdict in the county’s history of record. After the verdict, the defendant filed a motion for a new trial, stating improper conduct on the part of the plaintiff’s attorney. Even though the judge denied a new trial, he did reduce the verdict by $950,000, citing a “technical error.”

A Maine woman sued a health center and a birth control device’s manufacturer after the device failed and she became pregnant. A Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled last week that the woman, Kayla Doherty, could not claim damages.

According to reports, Doherty visited a health center supported by federal funds in 2012 to have a birth control device implanted into her arm. The device, manufactured by Merck, was supposed to inhibit ovulation for at least three years. After Doherty learned she was pregnant, she discovered that the device had never been implanted in her arm.

Doherty filed a lawsuit against Merck for product liability and the health center for negligence on the part of its physician. Both defendants moved to have the suit dismissed, claiming that the birth of a healthy child did not constitute injury.

When people file a medical malpractice case, it is because they are seeking compensation for financial damages that resulted because of a medical professional’s error or negligence. Unfortunately, cases are not always completed, as a woman in Washington recently discovered.

Michelle Dalen alleged that she fell on ice while cleaning off her car in the winter of 2011. The fall caused her to hit her head on the pavement. She claimed that she was hospitalized at St. John Medical Center and misdiagnosed with a mental illness. She also contended that the hospital did not get her consent for treatment she was given.

A judge dismissed the case last week, saying that the woman did not have enough evidence to prove her case.

A man’s death in 2005 is the subject of a lawsuit filed by his family against Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. The man’s daughter is accusing the hospital of medical malpractice in that they misdiagnosed and failed to treat her father appropriately, leading to his death. She is suing the hospital for damages linked to her father’s suffering as well as mental anguish on her part.

According to reports, Marie Leone’s father, Mario Leone, sought medical assistance for symptoms of an infection. He was misdiagnosed by Dr. Carl Watanabe and had to seek treatment at Alta Bates. The staff at the hospital also failed to diagnose her father properly.

Leone was denied treatment at Alta Bates’ emergency room for over eight hours. He was ultimately admitted but not diagnosed correctly until he had entered sepsis. The complaint alleges that Mario Leone died a painful death on January 13, 2005 because of a failure to diagnose and lack of treatment.

It’s not often that news of birth injury turns out to have a happy ending and rightly so. A birth injury can result in a lifetime of medical needs and a requirement for care. Even a single positive note in the life of a child dealing with a birth injury is newsworthy, and that was recently the case in Nebraska.

Carter Brown did not have the best start to life. During the first 15 minutes of his life in this world, he required oxygen so that his brain could survive and so could he. CPR was also necessary to aid the little infant. Almost immediately after his birth, Carter was diagnosed with a brain injury and, at 16 months old, he is now limited in his ability to be mobile.

He has been undergoing rehabilitation therapy at Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Nebraska. The road has been challenging, and his parents credit the hospital with much of the progress their son has made. Carter is still not able to sit, stand or crawl on his own, but he can take bites of food by himself and open his hand to hold onto his parents’.

A family has filed a lawsuit against Pediatrix Medical Group PC, Charleston Area Medical Center Inc. and James W. Lowery MD, alleging medical malpractice and negligence.

According to reports, the West Virginia family went to the hospital seeking treatment for the infant boy. As a result of a lack of proper care, the child suffered permanent brain injury along with other medical damages. Because of the injuries sustained by their son, the parents are claiming a loss of consortium, services and comfort of their son. The parents are alleging that the defendants failed to utilize hypothermia/cooling treatments.

The parents of the child are seeking a trial by jury. They want compensation that will cover their damages, along with other compensation that provides relief. The family has suffered financially due to the mistakes allegedly made by medical professionals. The date of the first court appearance is not known.

Approximately 8 months ago, Molly Banzhoff, 13, died from a brain tumor. Now, her family has filed a lawsuit, naming Concord Hospital, three of its doctors and its affiliates for medical negligence.

In the months leading up to her death, Molly received no brain imaging despite complaining of migraines, vision problems, numbness in her tongue and nausea. Her parents say these are classic signs of a brain tumor and doctors did nothing to diagnose her accurately.

Molly was admitted into the emergency room on May 1, 2016. Doctors only ordered a CT scan after Molly stopped breathing and became unresponsive twice. The tumor in her brain had grown so large by the time the scan was ordered that it destroyed her neurological function. She was declared brain dead just five days later. Her family chose to remove her from life support.