Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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On May 21, 2015, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed a general rule as a matter of law with respect to suicide. Maria Turcios brought a wrongful death lawsuit based on her husband’s suicide. The lawsuit alleged that it was caused by the defendant’s intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The lawsuit was filed against DeBruler Company as the agent for Colonial Park Apartments. Her husband was Nelsyn Caceras, who was also known as Ricardo Ortiz. The plaintiff alleged that she and her family had suffered through many efforts by the defendant apartment complex to throw the family out of their apartment stating that the building was being demolished. In fact, the apartment building was torn down.

The Supreme Court reviewed de novo the trial judge’s grant of the defendant’s motion to dismiss plaintiff’s wrongful death and survival claims. The Illinois Appellate Court vacated the order and remanded the case. The Supreme Court reversed and reinstated the dismissal order.

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Gwendolyn Brown was a 50-year-old woman who had been suffering from back pain. She underwent three epidural steroid injections that were given by a pain specialist, Dr. Dennis Doherty, at the Southeastern Pain Ambulatory Surgery Center. During the third epidural procedure, which was done under conscious sedation, it became difficult for the doctor and assistants to maintain Brown’s airway, and she stopped breathing for periods of times. Dr. Doherty and his nursing assistant continued with the procedure, even though his patient was not breathing from time to time.

Brown was later transferred to a hospital where she was diagnosed as having severe anoxic brain damage, which is the condition that follows a period of time when the brain is not fully or sufficiently oxygenated. Most severely brain damaged patients lose many cognitive and motor functions that include speech, sight, walking and other extremely debilitating deficits. Unfortunately, Brown died six years later. She was survived by her husband and three adult children.

Brown’s husband on behalf of her estate and family sued the surgery center, Dr. Doherty and his employer for medical negligence alleging failure to timely respond to an emergency situation during the epidural procedure — that period of time when Brown was unable to breath. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants should have turned Brown over from the prone position, provided a bag mask and started CPR in light of her critical oxygen status.

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Vitalina Martinez was a long-term patient of the defendant internal medicine physician Eladio Vargas, MD. Martinez was Dr. Vargas’s patient for over 17 years. During this time, Dr. Vargas prescribed various narcotics, Benzodiazepines and barbiturates. Martinez became addicted to these medicines.

She was 52 years old when she fell at home on Oct. 24, 2007. She alleged that the fall was caused by an overdose of the medications prescribed by Dr. Vargas. She was taken to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital where she was admitted for 3 weeks. During this 3-week hospitalization, she went through a detoxification protocol to ease her dependence on the multiple prescription medicines prescribed by Dr. Vargas.

Three weeks after her discharge from Lutheran General, she went to Dr. Vargas’s office on Dec. 4, 2007. At this visit, Dr. Vargas prescribed Xanax and 200 mg of MS Contin for daily use.

 

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On March 21, 2007, Daniel Gapinski underwent neurosurgery at OSF St. Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill. The surgery was for resection of the brain mass in the pituitary area. The defendant, Dr. Neena Gujrati, was the pathologist who interpreted the tissue specimens. Dr. Gujrati concluded that the tissue specimen were benign meningioma, a tumor usually found in the membrane lining of the brain just inside of the skull or on the spinal cord. These tumors are usually slow growing and are 90% of the time found to be benign.

Gapinski, who was then age 42, received small doses of radiation in an attempt to debulk the benign tumor. He was able to return to work as a heavy equipment operator for 2 years working up to 14 hours per day. However, in late 2008, Gapinski began experiencing symptoms similar to those he experienced in 2007 before his surgery. Gapinski returned to St. Francis Medical Center and also went to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., for a second opinion. He eventually underwent a two-phase neurosurgery procedure in 2009 at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The pathology from that surgery was read as renal cell carcinoma, indicating the presence of a kidney cancer that had metastasized to the brain.

Gapinski and his wife decided to return to Illinois for treatment at the University of Chicago Hospital. At the time of the transfer of his care to the University of Chicago, all of his medical records, including the original 2007 pathology slides prepared by Dr. Gujrati were evaluated. A pathologist at the University of Chicago diagnosed the tissues from 2007 as being consistent with renal cell carcinoma. Continue reading

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A wrongful-death case was brought against One Hope United Inc., one of its employees and the Cook County public guardian who was acting as administrator of 7-month-old Marshana Philpot. One Hope provides services to troubled families under a contract with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). One of its assignments from DCFS was to oversee Marshana and provide counseling to the child’s mother, Lashana Philpot.

Marshana had been hospitalized for failure to thrive and was eventually returned to Lashana Philpot under One Hope’s “intact family services” program. Unfortunately, the baby drowned in a bathtub allegedly because Lashana Philpot left her unattended.

In the wrongful-death case, the attorneys requested One Hope’s “priority review” report on the child’s death. The agency objected and invoked the privilege for self-critical analysis.

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Three years after the death of Kathryn Moon, the plaintiff, Randall Moon, who served as executor of his mother’s estate, filed a wrongful death and survival action lawsuit against the defendants, Dr. Clarissa Rhode and Central Illinois Radiological Associates Ltd. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s complaint stating that the complaint was filed untimely. The trial judge granted the defendants’ motion.

The plaintiff appealed arguing that the trial court was wrong in granting the defendants’ motion. The plaintiff contended that the discovery rule applied in that the statute of limitations did not begin to run until the date in which he knew or reasonably should have known of the defendants’ negligent conduct.

The decedent was Kathryn Moon, then 90, who was admitted to Proctor Hospital on May 18, 2009. Two days later, Dr. Jeffrey Williamson performed surgery on her. She remained in the hospital from May 20 to May 23, 2009 and then was seen by a different doctor from May 23 to May 28. She died on May 29, 2009.

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The Illinois Appellate Court ruled that the emergency-room resident physician, Dr. Nicholas Strane, was immune from suit under the Illinois Emergency Medical Services System Act.

This case arises out of transporting an 11-year-old boy, Donail Weems, who had a severe asthma attack and was taken to Provident Hospital, which is managed by Cook County. One of the physicians who rode along in the ambulance was Dr. Strane, a University of Chicago Medical Center physician. The University of Chicago Medical Center asked the Illinois Appellate court, First District Court to address whether one of its doctors was immune under the Emergency Medical Services Systems Act.

The trial was held in July 2013; the presiding judge denied the hospital’s motion for summary judgment, which asserted civil immunity, but the judge certified the question for appellate review.

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In December 2009, Marion Peterson was admitted to Our Lady of Resurrection Hospital in Chicago because of respiratory distress. After several days in the intensive care unit, she was transferred to a stepdown unit and started on the anticoagulant Lovenox for atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation is an irregular heartbeat or an abnormal heart rhythm that can be characterized by rapid or irregular beating of the hart. Some would describe atrial fibrillation as a quivering heartbeat or an irregular heartbeat; it can be very dangerous and lead to stroke or heart attack or other health issues. Symptoms of atrial fibrillation include lack of energy, dizziness and heart palpations.

On Dec. 18, 2009, Coumadin was initiated, which is another anticoagulant. However, Peterson, 72, became hypotensive and had a dangerously low blood pressure the next day, Dec. 19, 2009; she also experienced a 3 to 4 gm drop in her hemoglobin level.

She was then seen by several doctors until her internist, the defendant Dr. Danail Vatev, arrived. Once Dr. Vatev was involved in the medical care, he ordered a repeat hemoglobin test, a CT scan and other diagnostic studies. The hemoglobin test showed that Peterson had anemia, and Dr. Vatev ordered a blood transfusion, fresh frozen plasma (FFP) and vitamin K to reverse the anticoagulation effects.

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More than 25 lawsuits have been filed against Johnson & Johnson subsidiaries, Janssen Pharmaceuticals and Bayer Corporation, in consolidated cases in the Louisiana federal district court regarding the serious side effects of the blood-thinning drug, Xarelto.

Xarelto has been associated with serious side effects, including internal bleeding, gastrointestinal bleeding, brain bleeds and death.

It has been reported that thousands of individuals — patients who have been prescribed Xarelto as a blood-thinner  — have been affected. The presiding federal judge is Judge Eldon E. Fallon.

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General practitioner physician Dr. Ram Thawani was the attending physician for Peter Gates during his hospitalization at Chicago’s South Shore Hospital on Oct. 23, 2009. Gates, 57, died from a brain herniation, which is a swelling of the brain, and a brain hemorrhage on Oct. 29, 2009. Gates was survived by his wife and seven daughters.

The Gates family filed a lawsuit against Dr. Thawani claiming that he was negligent in choosing not to order a CT scan of the head, despite complaints of severe headaches with pain, described as level 10 on a scale of 1-10. Gates was also taking a blood thinner, Coumadin, at the time.

The defendant doctor argued that the headaches had waxed and waned and were associated with a fever of recent onset. He also said there was no focal neurological deficits to point to any problem in the brain, and the brain hemorrhage was a sudden event that no surgical intervention could have averted.

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