Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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Guadalupe Ramirez had a history of congestive heart failure.  She was also an insulin-dependent diabetic, had mitral valve regurgitation, atrial fibrillation, rheumatic heart disease, high blood pressure and a prosthetic heart valve.  Ramirez, 72, underwent a cardiac catheterization procedure on Nov. 21, 2003.  Eight days after the procedure, Ramirez presented to the emergency department at the University of Illinois Hospital (UIC) complaining of groin pain.

The defendant, Dr. Joan Briller, was the attending cardiologist for the first 24 hours of her admission.  Dr. Briller and other physicians considered a retroperitoneal bleed in their assessment, but did not order a CT scan until about 22 hours later.

All parties agreed that a retroperitoneal bleed is a recognized complication of cardiac catheterization and often occurs in the absence of negligence.

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In May 2001, Michael Hamilton was a worker at the Behr Process Corp. plant in Chicago Heights, Ill., when he began experiencing severe pain.  He was taken by ambulance to St. James Hospital in Chicago Heights, Ill. 

At the hospital, Hamilton was met by Dr. Jose Almeida.  Within a few hours, Hamilton was discharged saying that his pain had ended.  He was instructed to see his primary care physician the next day.  However, the next day Hamilton was found dead in his mother’s apartment.  An autopsy revealed that Hamilton died of pericardia tamponade, which is blood surrounding the heart as a result of an aortic dissection.

The mother of Hamilton, Evelyn Hart, filed a lawsuit in Cook County claiming that the hospital, St. James and Dr. Almeida, as well as the doctor’s employer, Excel Emergency Care LLC, were negligent. 

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An Alabama medical negligence case that found its way to the state supreme court, arose out of a jury’s verdict in the amount of $3.2 million. The verdict came in favor of the family of Lauree Ellison involving medical malpractice and hospital negligence at Baptist Medical Center East (BMCE).  The trial court denied the defendant’s post judgment motions seeking a new trial, or in the alternative, a reduction in the judgment.  The motion to reduce the verdict amount was based on the statutory cap contained in the Alabama code.

On Sept. 3, 2005, Lauree Ellison was treated in the emergency room as a patient of Baptist Medical Center East in Montgomery, Ala.  She was 73 years old and suffered from a number of chronic pre-existing medical conditions.  Ellison was there for an evaluation after she had fallen at her home. 

While she was in the emergency room, she mentioned that she had a sore throat.  An emergency room physician ordered a strep test, which was negative. The exam lab results showed that Ellison did not have an infection, and the x-rays that were done were unremarkable for injuries from her fall. She was then discharged and returned home.

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A medical malpractice lawsuit was filed by Daniel R. Hemminger, who sued the defendants Jeffrey LeMay, M.D. and Sterling Rock Falls Clinic Ltd. for damages related to the death of his wife, Tina.  The lawsuit alleged that the defendants, in choosing not to correctly diagnose and treat Tina’s cervical cancer in a timely manner, was the cause of her death by lessening her chance for survival. 

This is called the lost chance doctrine supported by the case of Holton v. Memorial Hospital, 176 Ill.2d 95 (1997) in which the Illinois Supreme Court held that “to the extent a plaintiff’s chance of recovery or survival is lessened by the malpractice, he or she should be able to present evidence to a jury that the defendant’s malpractice, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, proximately caused the increased risk of harm or lost chance of recovery.”

In this case, the trial judge granted the defendants’ motion for a directed verdict after the close of plaintiff’s case alleging that plaintiff failed to present evidence sufficient to establish that Dr. LeMay’s negligence proximately caused Tina’s death under a lost chance of survival.  The plaintiff appealed.

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 A 15-month-old child who required 24-hour care as a result of his extreme prematurity was under the care of a home health care nurse.  The nurse’s duties included keeping a watchful eye on the child to make sure he was properly ventilated. On the date of this incident, the child became detached from the ventilator. 

According to the lawsuit, the home health care nurse panicked and called the child’s father.  When the father came to the aid of the child, he began resuscitation efforts.  However, the child suffered cardiac arrest resulting in hypoxic brain damage.  The child is now in a persistent vegetative state. 

The family sued the home health care nurse claiming that she failed to manage the child’s oxygen saturation in a timely fashion, chose not to manage the child’s oxygen saturation, did not timely notice the dislodged ventilator and chose not to resuscitate the child in a timely manner.

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An 11-year-old lawsuit finally came to an end in St. Clair County, Ill., when the jury entered a $1 million verdict for the medical malpractice-wrongful death of 71-year-old Margaret Janet Brown.  The case stemmed from  a 2002 coronary artery bypass surgery that failed.

In this case, the wrongful death-medical malpractice lawsuit was filed against a Bellville, Ill., anesthesiologist.  The doctor named as a defendant was Daniel P. Gillen of St. Clair Hospital Anesthesia.  St. Elizabeth’s Hospital was also named as a defendant in the case, which was filed in 2003.

The lawsuit alleged negligence causing the death of Brown.  According to the complaint, Dr. Gillen chose not to first obtain a consent to use a Swan-Ganz catheter during the coronary artery bypass surgery.  The Swan-Ganz catheter is used in surgery to measure a patient’s blood flow output. The lawsuit also claimed that the anesthesiologist chose not to properly monitor the catherization during Brown’s surgery.

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Ronald Cobb underwent surgery to insert an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Ill.  When the procedure was completed on Feb. 3, 2009, Cobb was  51.  Just two hours after the surgery, Cobb suffered a myocardial infarction in the recovery room and passed away.

His family brought a lawsuit alleging that the defendant doctors were negligent in that they withheld his Plavix medication and chose not to perform an angiogram before this surgery.  It was claimed that the failure to do the angiogram resulted in simultaneous stent thrombosis in two coronary arteries. 

The defendants maintained that discontinuation of Plavix was appropriate under the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines. The defendants contended that Cobb did not require an angiogram.  The jury agreed with that proposition and found in favor of the doctors and their practice group.

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In September 2007, 55-year-old Barbara Ann Drebek-Doyle underwent a CT scan of the sinuses due to her recurrent sinusitis condition. The test was performed at Advocate Condell Gurnee Outpatient Radiology Center. The scan was interpreted by the defendant Dr. David E. Foosaner, a radiologist.  In a lawsuit that was filed by Ms. Drebek-Doyle, she contended that Dr. Foosaner chose not to detect and report a brain mass or tumor that was seen on the CT scan. As a result, the tumor remained undiscovered and untreated for 3.5 years. 

In March 2011, an MRI of the brain showed the brain mass at the top center of Ms. Drebek-Doyle’s head. Surgery was done to remove the benign mass, a meningioma that was in the membrane lining of the brain. Meningioma occur most frequently with women; they cause various types of symptoms.  Some symptoms include chronic headache, nausea, vomiting and balance issues. If the tumor is not removed fairly quickly, there is a risk that it may increase in size and cause much more serious effects, including death.

The plaintiff maintained that if the radiologist defendant had reported the mass in 2007, it could have been removed at that time. Instead, the delay caused Ms. Drebek-Doyle to suffer various problems over the next 3 ½ years, including increased headaches, loss of balance, memory deficits, bowel incontinence and fatigue. 

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A confidential settlement was reached wherein a 63-year-old woman’s misdiagnosed lung cancer led to her untimely death. The woman, identified only as Doe, underwent a CT scan while she was hospitalized. This showed a lung lesion that the interpreting radiologist reported as possible cancer. A hospitalist reported these findings to Doe’s primary care physician. 

The primary care physician referred Doe to a pulmonologist but did not tell her that cancer was suspected.  The hospital sent Doe’s CT scan to the pulmonologist, who reported to the primary care physician that part of the scan was missing. The primary care physician allegedly said that he would provide the missing film. However, there was no followup. The pulmonologist also chose not tell Doe that cancer was suspected when the two subsequently met.

Five years later, Doe developed shortness of breath and other ominous symptoms. Doe was diagnosed with having Stage IV lung cancer; she died two months later. Doe was survived by her husband and two adult children. Doe’s husband filed a lawsuit against the primary care physician and the pulmonologist claiming that these defendants chose not to follow up on the radiologist’s suspicion of lung cancer. The lawsuit did not claim any lost income.

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It is estimated that 250,000 people die each year in the United States as a result of medical malpractice according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.  Approximately 80,000 Medicare patients suffer preventable adverse events that contribute to their deaths; as many as half of those deaths are due to emergency room errors. 

In 2003, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office stated that “181,000 severe injuries (attributable to medical negligence) occurred in U.S. hospitals [,]”.  These numbers show that medical malpractice deaths have worsened during the past ten years. Despite this increase, state governments and legislatures have tried to impede the amount of money recoverable to injured or killed persons and/or their families as the result of medical malpractice. 

For example, in Missouri, where I have been a member of the bar since 1976, nearly 1/3 of medical malpractice cases involve surgery in some way. The next largest percentage of medical errors reported there is 18.7% for misdiagnosis leading to severe injury or death followed by 13.2% involving falls or injuries during transport of patients. 

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