Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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On Aug. 1 to Aug. 3, 2012, Luis Enrique Acevedo Muro M.D. attended a medical conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel on Adams Street in downtown Chicago. While staying at the hotel, which was recently renovated and located at 151 W. Adams St., Dr. Acevedo was exposed to dangerous aerosolized water vapor from the hotel fountain, which was contaminated by Legionella bacteria. As a result, Dr. Acevedo, 80, contracted Legionnaires’ disease and was hospitalized at the University of Miami Hospital on Aug. 8, 2012 with fever, shortness of breath and hypoxia, which is a reduced blood flow with oxygen to the body.

Dr. Acevedo suffered from several pre-existing co-morbidities, including Stage 3 chronic kidney disease, coronary artery disease, diabetes and hyperlipedemia. Due to these serious medical conditions, Dr. Acevedo rapidly deteriorated, and he was transferred to the intensive care unit, but he subsequently became hypotensive, required intubation and then died on Aug. 14, 2012.

Dr. Acevedo was survived by his second wife and their daughter as well as four older daughters from his previous marriage. His family’s claim for medical expenses was $131,000. The hotel admitted liability and causation, but contested the damages.

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A Cook County jury found that no medical negligence that caused the death of Jerome Granat following a cardiac catherization. On June 16, 2010, the defendant cardiologist, Dr. Surendra Avula, performed a cardiac catherization procedure on 64-year-old Granat at Advocate Christ Hospital. The patient’s previous cardiac history included quadruple coronary artery bypass surgery in 1994, three stents put in place in 2002 and 2007 and one heart attack, but he still had normal heart function and was in reasonably good health at the time of this procedure.

Dr. Avula, the head of the cardiac cath lab at Christ Hospital, found 99% blockage in Granat’s old bypass vein graft, requiring a new stent; however, the old graft ruptured when the stent was inserted.

Despite emergency surgery, Granat suffered brain damage and died 2 weeks later. He had recently retired and was survived by his wife and three adult children. The family filed a lawsuit against Dr. Avula and his practice maintaining that he selected a stent that was too large (4 mm instead of 3.5 mm), that he improperly responded to the graft rupture and that he should have re-inserted a balloon to stop the bleeding rather than transferring the patient for emergency cardiovascular surgery.

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Margaret Brown, a 71-year-old retiree, was admitted to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Belleville, Ill., in October 2002 to undergo a coronary artery bypass surgery. During the initial stages of the bypass surgery, Brown suffered a pulmonary artery injury. It was claimed in the lawsuit that the artery injury was caused by the insertion of a Swan-Ganz catheterization.

The Swan-Ganz catheter is commonly used by passing a thin tube, which is the catheter, into the right side of the heart and the arteries leading to the lungs to monitor the heart’s blood flow or output during the surgery. The Swan-Ganz catherization is also used to inform doctors and surgeons of an abnormal blood flow. Its use is standard operating procedure for monitoring patient heart and blow flood output in invasive heart surgeries.

In this lawsuit, the family of Margaret Brown maintained that the use of the Swan-Ganz catheter was the cause of her death on Oct. 28, 2002. The family alleged that the defendant anesthesiologist, Dr. Daniel Gillen, was responsible. Their claim was medical battery in that the doctor chose not to obtain consent for the use of the Swan-Ganz catheter by the patient before the beginning of the surgery. Medical battery is a legal cause of action where the medical provider is claimed to have treated the patient without the patient’s consent.

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On March 10, 2007, Ramona Sue Yates was a patient in the emergency room at Memorial Hospital in Carbondale, Ill. She complained of severe back and abdominal pain. The defendant, emergency room physician, Dr. Daniel Doolittle, who was employed by the defendant Legatus Emergency Services, chose not to correctly diagnose or even suspect that Yates was suffering from a bowel obstruction and internal hernia.

Two years earlier, Yates, 47, had undergone gastric bypass surgery. Bowel obstruction is a known complication for patients following the weight-loss surgery.

Dr. Doolittle reportedly misdiagnosed Yates as having back spasms and had her admitted to the hospital for observation. Unfortunately, Yates died from the bowel obstruction the next day, March 11, 2007. She is survived by her husband and an adult son. She was employed as a nurse at a mental health facility.

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Joel Burnette was just 40 years old with bipolar disorder and other mental health issues. He underwent a lumbar epidural steroid injection at a pain clinic to combat his back pain. The following week Burnette developed a lump at the epidural injection site. Burnette informed nurses at the pain clinic, and he was told by a nurse that this was not something to be concerned about. Days later, Burnette received a second epidural injection. After that second injection, Burnette developed an epidural abscess, deep tissue infection and MRSA meningitis and was diagnosed as having cauda equina syndrome, which left him with chronic pain, among other problems.

Cauda equina is a condition in which the nerves in the spine are compressed. MRSA meningitis is an uncommon disease that affects the lining around the brain and spinal cord. It can be fatal. MRSA alone is a bacterial infection that if not treated and eradicated by intense antibiotic treatment can be deadly. Burnette unfortunately later committed suicide

Burnette was survived by his parents who sued the anesthesiologist, Kimber Eubanks, M.D. and the pain clinic claiming that all were negligent in choosing not to identify the infection after the first injection and giving a second injection to an infected patient.

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A jury deliberated 12 hours over two days before it was deadlocked, unable to reach a verdict by unanimous consent. The jury was deadlocked 8-4 or 7-5 in favor of the defendant Dr. Ian J. Goldberg.

This case arose out of an April 25, 2009 event, when Michael Knorps experienced crushing chest pain, shortness of breath and diaphoresis. Diaphoresis is a medical term for sweating profusely. Paramedics came to the 52-year-old Knorps giving him nitroglycerin, which completely relieved his chest pain. He was admitted to St. Alexius Hospital in Hoffman Estates, Ill., and was diagnosed with unstable angina. EKGs, cardiac enzymes and a cardiology consultation were all ordered. Knorps, 52, was seen the next day by a cardiologist, Dr. Ian Goldberg, who suspected coronary artery disease and recommended cardiac catherization/angiogram.

The angiogram was done the following day by Dr. Sumeet Sachdev, who found only mild coronary disease with 20% blockage of the left anterior descending artery and no disease in the other coronary arteries.

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A 65-year-old woman, we’ll call her Ms. Doe, underwent a successful elective surgery at a California hospital and was later transferred to a private room. The woman was stable by midnight that day, but three hours later nurses found her unresponsive. A code blue was called and despite resuscitation efforts, Doe’s condition deteriorated. She died of cardiopulmonary arrest. Doe had been retired and was survived by her husband and two adult children.

The family of Doe sued the hospital and several nurses claiming that a malfunctioning medication pump had caused Doe to receive an overdose of morphine. In addition, the lawsuit claimed that an inadequate pulse oximetry alarms prevented the nurses from timely responding to Doe before she became unresponsive. The defendants denied that they had chosen not to attend to Doe’s hypoxia state in a timely fashion. Before trial, the parties settled for $375,000.

In some cases, morphine, which is an extremely potent pain drug, can give rise to severe and often deadly side effects for patients who have an intolerance to this drug.  There are many effective pain medication alternatives to the use of morphine for patients who have a history of harmful side effects.

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In this medical malpractice case, plaintiff Daniel Hemminger sued defendants Jeffrey LeMay, M.D., and his medical practice for damages related to the death of Hemminger’s wife, Tina. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants chose not to diagnose and treat her cervical cancer in a timely fashion, which caused her death by lessening her chance of survival. At the close of the plaintiff’s case, the trial judge granted the defendants’ motion for directed verdict finding that Hemminger had failed to present sufficient evidence to show that Dr. LeMay’s negligence was the proximate cause of the woman’s death under a lost chance of survival theory. Hemminger took this appeal.

Tina Hemminger saw Dr. LeMay, an obstetrician/gynecologist, on June 23, 2000 complaining of abdominal pain and spotting. Dr. LeMay completed a pelvic examination, which showed that her cervix was abnormally large and firm. There was no biopsy ordered. Dr. LeMay did not order a microscopic examination of her cervix. About 6 months later, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Her cancer was Stage 3B, which has a 5-year survival rate of 32%. She died of metastatic cervical cancer on April 7, 2002.

Her husband sued Dr. LeMay for medical negligence claiming that he was negligent in choosing not to order tests that would have detected his wife’s cervical cancer in 2000. The lawsuit further alleged that had Dr. LeMay diagnosed the cancer in June 2000 rather than in December 2000, she would have had a significantly better chance of surviving the cancer.

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Ethel Bolton had been a resident of Glenshire Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Richton Park, Ill. She was there from 2001 until 2006. During the years 2004 through 2006, she was cared for by internist Dr. Lance Wallace.

On July 7, 2005, Bolton had an abnormal albumin level of 3.2, which is a sign of malnutrition.

Beginning on Sept. 30, 2005, Bolton also had skin breakdowns and bedsores, which worsened over the next four months. On Jan. 29, 2006, Bolton’s daughter, Margaret, noticed at the nursing home that her mother was naked in a backroom in a general state of neglect showing signs of malnutrition, dehydration, emaciation and multiple areas of skin breakdown and bedsores.

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On Dec. 29, 2008, Camilla Hayes, 76, came to the emergency room at Rush Oak Park Hospital complaining of abdominal pain. The emergency room doctor, Dr. Joseph DiPiazza, did not order a complete cardiac workup. She was later diagnosed and treated for gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). However, Hayes was in process of being discharged from the hospital after four and a half hours in the ER when she suddenly collapsed and died. She is survived by two adult children. No autopsy was performed and the parties agreed that she most likely died from a sudden cardiac arrest based on her multiple risk factors for cardiac disease, including hypertension, high cholesterol, morbid obesity and a history of smoking.

The family filed a lawsuit against the doctor and his practice, claiming that Dr. DiPiazza was negligent in choosing not to properly evaluate Hayes’ symptoms from a cardiac standpoint, choosing not to diagnose her cardiac condition, choosing not to order cardiac enzyme tests and serial EKGs, and discharging her instead of admitting her to a telemetry floor for observation.

The family also maintained that the hospital nurses did not determine the exact location of Hayes’s burning discomfort at the time of triage and chose not to initiate the nursing standing orders for unexplained chest pain.

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