Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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Joyce Williamson was 73 years old when she underwent surgery to treat spinal cord compression caused from cervical stenosis. Cervical stenosis is a slowly progressing condition that impinges on the spinal cord section of the neck. It can be very painful.

Several days after her surgery, she complained of shoulder weakness and then underwent an MRI of the cervical spine. The results showed fluid collecting, but no compression of the spinal cord. Her condition worsened. Her rehabilitation physician contacted her treating neurosurgeon who was Dr. George Shanno.

Dr. Shanno evaluated Williamson several hours later and gave a different diagnosis of stroke or epidural hematoma. An epidural hematoma is the traumatic accumulation of blood between the tough outer membrane of the nervous system and the skull. An epidural hematoma would usually occur because of a sudden and blunt blow to the head or in the event of a skull fracture.

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Kreisman Law Offices is reviewing and handling lawsuits on behalf of patients who have suffered infections following knee, hip or other joint replacement surgeries. The lawsuits currently in place allege that 3M’s Bair Hugger warming blanket, which is widely used in hospitals across the country, are the cause of devastating injuries related to infection. Surgical patients exposed to the use of the Bair Hugger blanket have been known to be contaminated by the air in operating rooms that many times causes infections leading to sepsis and MRSA.

Many of the pending lawsuits have named Arizant Healthcare and 3M Company, charging the companies that the Bair Hugger warming blankets have manufactured, designed and distributed are defective and cause severe and debilitating infections. It has been alleged in the lawsuits that the manufacturers and distributors have known about the infection risks for more than 6 years and have chosen not to warn hospitals, doctors and patients about the dangers.

The 3M Bair Hugger is a warming blanket that uses forced air designed to keep the patient’s body temperature at a normal range. It is used principally during hip and knee replacement surgeries. The Bair Hugger device forces warm air through a hose into a special blanket that is draped over the patient in the surgical suite.

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The plaintiff, Brian Dore, was 70 and retired when he saw his family practice physician, the defendant, Dr. Bradford Wainer.  It was April 16, 2012, and Dore complained of severe right shoulder pain when he started to play golf in March 2012. Dr. Wainer palpated something suspicious under Dore’s skin in the upper shoulder/chest area and heard a heart murmur.  Dr. Wainer ordered rib and chest x-rays, which were completed that day.  He also ordered a transthoracic echocardiogram for the following day.

The x-ray showed opacity in the upper right lung and potential pathologic fractures. The echocardiogram showed thickening of the mitral heart valve and small light mitral regurgitation, which the defendant doctor maintained was consistent with mitral systolic murmur and not indicative of any disease. Mitral regurgitation is the condition of a patient whose heart valve, the valve of the left of the heart, doesn’t close all the way and allows blood to flow back into the chamber. This would happen each time the mitral valve would close. It’s a dangerous condition.

Dr. Wainer then ordered blood tests and CT scans. The blood work showed mildly elevated white blood cell count, platelets and sedimentation rate as well as low hemoglobin (10.5), all of which were indicative of anemia.

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Curtis Cole, 58, underwent a chest X-ray when he reported respiratory symptoms to his physician. A radiologist, Dr. Mike Mantinaos, interpreted the X-ray as showing no nodular abnormalities.

About 3 years later however, Cole experienced pain, prompting him to request a chest and abdominal CT scan. The CT scan revealed a mass on his right lung as well as several in his liver, which were determined to be malignant.

Cole died of cancer two years later and was survived by his wife and adult son. He had been a senior application specialist in a metal manufacturing company earning $35,000 per year.

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A 15-month-old child was admitted to the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital with pneumonia. After a nurse tried three times to place an endotracheal tube, a pediatric critical care specialist intubated the child successfully. However, because of oxygen deprivation related to the nurse’s misplacement of the endotracheal tube into the child’s esophagus, he was catastrophically brain damaged. In this case, the unnamed child was referred to as “Doe” and requires constant care.

Doe and his family filed a lawsuit against the nurse and the pediatric critical care physician alleging that the nurse should not have attempted to intubate Doe more than once. It was also claimed that the doctor should have supervised the nurse during the attempted intubation and should have taken over after her first attempt failed. The lawsuit claimed that the defendants chose not to timely recognize that the endotracheal tube had been misplaced into Doe’s esophagus.

Finally, the Doe family alleged that the hospital was vicariously liable for the actions of the nurse and the doctor.

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Paulette Elher filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Dwijen Misra Jr. M.D., seeking damages alleging that Dr. Misra accidentally clipped her common bile duct while performing a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Elher wanted to have the court admit expert testimony where it would be stated that clipping a patient’s common bile duct during an otherwise uncomplicated laparoscopic cholecystectomy was a breach of the standard of care. She also claimed that negligence could be inferred from the improperly clipped bile duct under the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur.

The defendants in this case moved to exclude Elher’s proposed expert’s testimony on the ground that, because it was not supported by peer-reviewed literature or the opinions of other physicians, it did not meet the standards for reliability under the Rules of Evidence Section 702. Rule 702 is the rule of evidence regarding testimony by experts. The rule is in place to assist the jury or court in understanding scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge and to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue. A witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training or education may testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise.

The court of appeals in Michigan held that the trial judge had abused its discretion by incorrectly applying Rule 702 to exclude the testimony of plaintiff’s expert witness because the factors that the trial court considered were not relevant to the expert’s testimony, which did not involve an unsound scientific methodology or questionable data. Rather, the majority concluded that injuring the common bile duct violated the applicable standard of care called for a value judgment derived from training and experience. The majority agreed, however, with the trial court that the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur did not apply to plaintiff’s claim. The dissent agreed with the majority’s analysis of the res ipsa loquitur issue but concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion by excluding the testimony of plaintiff’s expert regarding the standard of care because no basis had been offered for the testimony apart from the expert’s own personal views. The defendants sought leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

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The Illinois Appellate Court found that Advocate Christ Hospital should not have been dismissed from a wrongful-death lawsuit that involved pediatric cardiovascular surgeon Mary Jane Barth, M.D. The issue in the case was whether Advocate Christ Hospital could be held as the principal for the apparent agency of a doctor who practices there. The hospital argued that Dr. Barth was an independent contractor and thus, the plaintiff could not hold the hospital liable as the principal for any wrongful conduct of an agent (a doctor).

The First District Illinois Appellate Court found it was reasonable for the plaintiff, Natalie Hammer, to assume Dr. Barth was acting on behalf of Advocate Christ Hospital when she performed a number of operations on her husband, Jerry Hammer, who died in 2010.

Natalie Hammer filed a lawsuit against Advocate, Barth and Barth’s employer, Cardiovascular Surgeons Ltd. (CSL) for medical malpractice and wrongful death. The three-justice appellate court panel found that Advocate Christ Hospital could be held liable because Hammer demonstrated that Advocate did not carefully distinguish between itself and its independent doctors and that Hammer relied on Advocate to care for her husband.

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Wismond Brissett, 45, was treated at a local hospital for first- and second-degree burns. He suffered these burns while he was cooking at his home. Two days later, a plastic surgeon, Dr. David Watts, diagnosed first-, second- and third-degree burns to Brissett’s body. Dr. Watts scheduled a skin graft and a second debridement for the next day.

After the procedures, which included removal of skin from Brissett’s thighs and the placement of staples to secure the grafted skin, Brissett suffered severe pain and scarring on his arms and chest.

Brissett required narcotic pain medication and has become depressed and embarrassed about the scarring for which there is no medical treatment.

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Gary, 44, suffered from chronic neck pain. He underwent a cervical injection procedure at a surgical center and was treated by an anesthesiologist. After Gary was placed lying faced down during this procedure, the surgical staff discovered that Gary was not breathing. He was resuscitated and hospitalized. However, Gary died six months later due to complications from hypoxia or a deprivation of oxygen, which undoubtedly occurred while he was undergoing the cervical injection and was not breathing.

Gary had been a railroad worker earning about $90,000 a year and was survived by his wife and two minor children.

Gary’s family filed a lawsuit against the anesthesiologist alleging that the doctor chose not to monitor Gary during the cervical injection procedure and failed to timely respond to the fact that Gary’s vital signs showed signs of hypoxia. It was also maintained that the doctor chose not to intervene before Gary suffered the hypoxic event.

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On Aug. 31, 2010, 58-year-old Romil Pityou went to the Gerstein Eye Institute in Chicago with complaints of pain, redness and decreased vision in his right eye. He was treated by the defendant Melvyn A. Gerstein, M.D., an ophthalmologist. Over the next three weeks, he continued to undergo treatment by Dr. Gerstein. Two days after his last visit to the Gerstein Eye Institute, he went to a hospital emergency room where he was referred to a cornea/retina specialist who diagnosed him with endophthalmitis, which is an infection of the inner eye.

Pityou filed a lawsuit against Gerstein Eye Institute and Dr. Gerstein, maintaining that both were negligent by choosing not to properly treat his corneal infection. Without treatment, the delay caused him to suffer endophthalmitis, blindness of the right eye and a shrunken eyeball. He was fitted with a prosthetic shell.

The defendants contended that their treatment of the corneal ulcer was proper and within the standard of care. The defendants said the plaintiff’s eye corneal infection was not related to the corneal ulcer and that the endophthalmitis was likely caused by bacteria that was introduced to the eye during a prior cataract surgery.

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