Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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Shamir Tillery was 11 months old when he went to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia emergency room. Shamir was suffering from fever and breathing difficulties. The hospital and emergency room staff diagnosed an upper respiratory infection or pneumonia and sent him home.

The next day, Shamir was returned to the Children’s Hospital with worsened symptoms. This included increased fever, irritability, increased pulse and respiration rates, dehydration and lethargy. The emergency room physician, Dr. Monika Goyal, ordered chest X-rays, ruled out pneumonia and upper respiratory infection and again sent Shamir home with instructions to follow up with his pediatrician.

The following day, Shamir returned to the same hospital. Over the next several hours he was examined and received a diagnosis of possible pneumonia or bacterial infection. More than 6 hours after he arrived at Children’s Hospital, he underwent a lumbar puncture that revealed bacterial meningitis. The late diagnosis and treatment was devastating. Shamir is now 6 years old. He suffers from brain damage and a profound hearing loss.
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Christina Yarbrough and David Goodpaster brought a medical negligence lawsuit against Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) and Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation (NMFF) after the premature birth of their daughter, Hayley Joe Goodpaster. This case came to the Illinois Appellate Court by the request of NMH regarding the doctrine of apparent authority in the medical negligence context. The trial court certified a question of law pursuant to Illinois Supreme Court Rule 308.

The question was this: “Can a hospital be held vicariously liable under the doctrine of apparent agency set forth in Gilbert v. Sycamore Mun. Hosp., 156 Ill.2d 511 (Ill. 1993), and its progeny for the acts of the employees of an unrelated, independent clinic that is not a party to the present litigation?”

The case involved Christina Yarbrough, who believed she was pregnant. She went to Erie Family Health Center Inc. (Erie) a federally funded, not-for-profit clinic on Nov. 14, 2005 after searching the Internet for a nearby clinic offering free pregnancy testing. After receiving a positive pregnancy test, healthcare workers at Erie inquired where Yarbrough would receive prenatal care. Yarbrough was advised that if she obtained prenatal care from Erie, she would deliver at NMH and would receive testing and additional care at NMH, including ultrasounds. She was given a pamphlet and a flyer with information regarding scheduling tours and classes at NMH. The plaintiffs in this case alleged that based on her knowledge of NMH’s reputation and the information provided by Erie, Yarbrough believed that if she received prenatal care from Erie, she would be receiving treatment from NMH health care workers.
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In a significant birth trauma injury case, the mother was given Pitocin while in delivery at the hospital. Labor was more than 14 hours. It was managed by two resident physicians and an attending physician. There were signs of uterine hyperstimulation, which was alleged to have occurred hours before the delivery and followed by hours of obvious fetal distress.

According to the report on this case, a nurse told one of the residents that the fetal monitoring signs indicated fetal distress.  However, even with this information, the physician allegedly concluded there was no fetal distress and instead increased the dose of Pitocin. The nurse reported the fetal monitoring signs of distress to her supervisor who then contacted a more senior resident and the attending physician who then stopped the administration of Pitocin.

The baby was later delivered with the assistance of forceps. At the baby’s delivery, the APGAR scores of 3 at 1 minute and 5 at 5 minutes were charted. The baby, who’s now nearing 7 years old, had suffered a brain injury from inadequate oxygen.

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Daniel Cantu was 3 months old when he was brought to Walker Baptist Medical Center’s emergency room suffering from fever, crying, fussiness, tachycardia, diarrhea and other symptoms. He underwent a physical examination, a chest x-ray and a flu test, which were all reported to be negative. Daniel was diagnosed as having an upper respiratory infection and was discharged.

That same night, Daniel’s condition worsened. He was returned to the hospital the next day and was noted to have additional symptoms such as vomiting, dehydration and a sunken fontanelle as well as weight loss. Testing at the hospital revealed many abnormalities, including impaired liver function and white blood cell levels.

Pediatrician Dr. James Wilbanks examined Daniel the following day and ordered flu tests, IV fluids and Tylenol on an as-needed basis. Two days later, Daniel was discharged again. He was then brought to another pediatrician who ordered an immediate lumbar puncture. The lumbar puncture showed that Daniel was likely suffering from bacterial meningitis, a diagnosis that was later confirmed. Daniel was hospitalized for about one month and now, at the age of 6, suffers from a seizure disorder, blindness, deafness and other problems.

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Llulin Cruz, 31, was admitted to St. Barnabas Hospital to deliver her first child. The attending obstetrician was Dr. Michael Ihemaguba, who performed a midline episiotomy after he delivered the baby’s head. Dr. Ihemaguba then told Cruz to continue pushing. This resulted in a fourth-degree laceration, which Dr. Ihemaguba then repaired. The next day, Cruz complained of vaginal gas and Dr. Ihemaguba told her this would improve over time.

About 5 months later, Cruz became pregnant with her second child. She consulted midwife Gloria Murray for prenatal care and told her that she had fecal-smelling vaginal discharge. Murray called Dr. Ihemaguba and told him about Cruz’s symptoms. Dr. Ihemaguba instructed Murray to do nothing, but he told her to send Cruz to him after the baby was born.

After the vaginal delivery, which the midwife performed, Cruz was diagnosed as having a rectal-vaginal fistula. Cruz required 13 surgeries during the next 3 years, including an ileostomy and a “pulled down” procedure involving removal of her rectum. Cruz has lost control of her bowel function and is no longer able to engage in sexual relations. As she ages, her medical condition is expected to worsen, necessitating a permanent colostomy.

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Baby Doe was less than two months old when she contracted respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which caused her to stop breathing during the night. Her foster mother, Betty Cook, called the doctor’s office 4 hours later and was told to go to an emergency room. Instead, she took the baby to a clinic where she was seen by a family physician, Dr. Anne Hamilton.

During the appointment, Baby Doe stopped breathing necessitating resuscitation by Dr. Hamilton. Dr. Hamilton told Cook to drive the child to a hospital five minutes away. At the hospital,the baby was diagnosed as having suffered a hypoxic brain injury. Baby Doe is now 5 years old. She suffers from cortical blindness and is unable to walk, stand, sit, and feed herself or talk.

The Doe family filed a lawsuit against Betty Cook, the foster parent and Dr. Hamilton and the insurance fund for foster parents alleging that (1) Hamilton choose not to summon emergency care or accompany Baby Doe to the hospital; and (2) Cook choose not to timely go the hospital after she was told to do so by the doctor.

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Emanuel A. Friedman M.D. introduced the Friedman Curve in 1955. In a recently submitted article written by Michigan lawyers Jesse M. Reiter and Emily G. Thomas, the authors and stalwarts of the Birth Trauma Litigation Group write that the gold standard for assessing the normal and abnormal progress of labor was changed in 2014. The change by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) replaced Friedman’s curve with new labor standards.

The purpose of the Friedman Curve was to assess labor progression and to identify whether the mother had a “reduced likelihood of a safe vaginal delivery.”  When there was an abnormal progress of labor, such as when neonatal morbidity and mortality were greatly increased, the analysis called on obstetricians to decide very quickly to rescue the unborn baby.

According to the Friedman papers, an “arrest of dilation” was diagnosed by documenting the lack of dilation progress in the active phase of labor. “Protracted active-phase” dilation was defined to be 1.2 cm per hour or 1.5 cm per hour where there was more than one fetus to be delivered.  According to the paper submitted by attorneys Reiter and Thomas, two vaginal examinations done by the same individuals spaced two hours apart was good enough to make this diagnosis. If the cervix did not dilate according to the maximal slope on Friedman’s curve over two hours, the patient was diagnosed with failure to progress/arrest of labor and delivered by Cesarean delivery. Cesarean delivery was then recommended to avoid neonatal death or catastrophic injury. Many studies over the 60 years showed that the research supported the Friedman Curve.

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This was a birth injury case in which the jurors were asked to award up to $7.5 million for a life care plan for the baby girl, Jill Todd, as well as $1.4 million in lost wages and an unspecified amount of damages for pain and suffering. The issue in this case was whether the University of Iowa’s Health Center physicians and staff provided proper care to Jill Todd in November 2010.  After two days of deliberation, the jury returned a 9-1 verdict finding that the University of Iowa Health Center was negligent but that negligence wasn’t “a cause of damage” to the child. This was an odd verdict or at least one that most would consider inconsistent.

Investigators confirmed that they were looking into an unusual claim of jury tampering in this medical malpractice, birth injury case involving the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. As a result of the jury’s unusual verdict, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics paid nothing for the injured child.

After a 3-week trial, the jury found that the hospital was negligent in caring for a mother who suffered complications before giving birth in 2010. But the jurors found that negligence was not a cause of damage to the child. The baby suffered brain damage and is severely disabled. The jury awarded no compensation to the family.

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A Cook County jury entered its verdict in favor of the defendant obstetrician, Dr. Cynthia Page, following a trial claiming that the birth of Anthony Ruiz was delayed causing him a lifetime of cognitive deficits.

The family of Anthony Ruiz, a minor, claimed in their Cook County, Ill., lawsuit that a delay in performing a Cesarean section surgery at Elmhurst Memorial Hospital on Sept. 16, 2010 was the cause of the baby’s cognitive impairments, including a lower IQ, diminished executive function and impaired fine motor skills.

The case centered on a nurse who telephoned the defendant obstetrician Dr. Page at 12:31 a.m. to tell her about the baby’s distress. Dr. Page arrived at the hospital at 12:48 a.m. and a C-section was ordered at 12:56 a.m. The newborn was delivered at 1:20 a.m.

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This was a medical malpractice and wrongful death case of a newborn baby. The issue on appeal to the Vermont Supreme Court was whether the defendants’ (two physicians and hospitals) motion to dismiss predicated on the plaintiff’s (the family of the newborn) failure to timely serve summonses on these defendants was justified.

The parents of the newborn baby alleged that on June 12, 2012 their son died as a result of medical malpractice at the defendant hospital and at the hands of two physicians, who were claimed to have been negligent in their care and treatment or lack of it.

The plaintiffs filed their complaints against both sets of defendants on June 20, 2014. Under the applicable code of civil procedure, the plaintiffs had 60 days to serve the defendants with summonses.  On Aug. 18, 2014, the day before the 60-day period was set to expire, plaintiffs moved for an enlargement of time for service, requesting that the court extend the deadline for service of process “for an additional sixty (60) days.”

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