$15 Million Jury Verdict in Improper Supervision of an Unlicensed Doctor

Arleisha Hayes suffered from asthma. She was 44 years old at the time of this incident. She experienced shortness of breath when taken by ambulance to Hialeah Hospital. When she was admitted to the facility’s ICU and given a nasal swab, the swab showed no infection.

For the next several days, she was treated with steroids and antibiotics. After her condition improved somewhat, she was transferred to a telemetry floor.

While in the telemetry floor, Hayes developed severe shortness of breath and chest pains. This prompted a nurse to call for a rapid response. The house physician, Dr. Xavier Ramos, a medical school graduate who was not licensed to practice medicine, ordered a STAT chest X-ray and transferred her back to the ICU.

Hayes became tachycardic; another house doctor called for a second rapid response. A pulmonologist ordered Vancomycin for treatment of hospital-acquired MRSA. Despite this treatment, Hayes suffered a cardiac arrest and died later that day. She was survived by her three minor children.

Hayes’s family, on behalf of her estate, sued the hospital’s owner and operator maintaining that it had a policy of placing unlicensed house physicians with inadequate training and experience in charge of critically ill patients and did not properly supervise the doctors. The Hayes estate also alleged that it chose not to properly treat pneumonia and the hospital-acquired MRSA infection with Vancomycin and Zosyn.

The lawsuit did not claim lost income. The jury signed a verdict for $15 million for Hayes’s wrongful death and suffering.

At trial, the Hayes family lawyers presented experts in critical care and patient safety.

The attorneys successfully handling this tragic lawsuit were Alan Goldfarb and David Applebee.

Hayes-Boursiquot v. Hialeah Hospital, Inc., No. 2015-024325-CA 01 (Fla. Cir. Ct. Miami-Dade County).

Kreisman Law Offices has been handling medical malpractice lawsuits, wrongful death cases, hospital negligence lawsuits and misdiagnosis cases for individuals, families and loved ones who have been harmed, injured or died as a result of the carelessness or negligence of a medical provider for more than 40 years in and around Chicago, Cook County and its surrounding areas, including Countryside, Melrose Park, Franklin Park, Elmhurst, Elmwood Park, Wood Dale, Elk Grove Village, Niles, Morton Grove, Mount Prospect, Hoffman Estates, Olympia Fields, Chicago (Edgewater, Uptown, Lakeview, Lincoln Park, River North, Brighton Park, Near West Side, Little Village, Englewood, South Side, South Chicago, East Side), Hinsdale, Downers Grove, Glen Ellyn, Bloomingdale, Lake Zurich and Gurnee, Ill.

Robert D. Kreisman has been an active member of the Illinois and Missouri bars since 1976.