Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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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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The U.S. Supreme Court says it will not hear an appeal from Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiary, Janssen, which had been penalized $124 million for deceptive marketing of its anti-psychotic drug, Risperdal. The federal district court has entered a ruling that Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. should pay penalties for violating South Carolina law. In 2011, it was found that Janssen had been downplaying the effects of its drug Risperdal by claiming that it was safer than other similar competing medications.

The total penalty of $124 million for deceptive marketing was the largest drug marketing award in state history and largest penalty levied for violations of the South Carolina Unfair Trade Practices Act.

It was claimed that Janssen knew that Risperdal was related to health problems that they hid from doctors. Instead, Janssen publicized studies that it claimed were evidence that the drug lowered incidences of diabetes and weight gain when compared to other similar medicines. Those claims were false.

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Kastriot Sadiku, a 29-year-old student who had used oxycodone, went to a hospital suffering from vomiting and impaired respiration among other symptoms. He was seen by an internist, Dr. Joseph Hederman, who gave Sadiku supplemental oxygen and began to monitor his heart and blood oxygenation.

When Sadiku’s condition worsened, he was attached to a respirator.

About an hour and half later, Dr. Hederman consulted an intensivist, Dr. Steven Bonzino, who diagnosed acute respiratory distress. Dr. Bonzino adjusted Sadiku’s supplemental oxygen.

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Carol Haas was 68 years old when she went to a nearby hospital where she was diagnosed with a myocardial infarction — a heart attack. She underwent an angioplasty performed by a cardiologist, Dr. Kevin Boyle.

Apparently because of some blocked artery or arteries, she underwent an angioplasty, which is a method used to open up clogged or blocked arteries. This procedure is performed by a cardiologist who threads a thin tube through a blood vessel in the arm or groin up to the involved site in the artery. The tube has a tiny balloon on the end. When the tube is in place, the doctor inflates the balloon to push the plaque outward against the wall of the artery. This widens the artery and restores blood flow. During that procedure, Haas developed extensive intracoronary thrombi, or clots and other heart damage; she required an emergency coronary bypass.

Haas suffered a cardiogenic shock and was transferred to another hospital so that she could be evaluated for a heart transplant. Unfortunately, she died before the evaluation. Haas was survived by her husband and five adult children.

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John Ficke was 50 years old when he developed a growth on his chest. His treating dermatologist performed a shave biopsy and sent the specimen to Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where a dermatology pathologist, Dr. Asher Rabinowitz, interpreted the growth as noncancerous. However, one year later, Ficke underwent a punch biopsy of the same growth and Dr. Rabinowitz reported this time the presence of desmoplastic melanoma.

Ficke underwent treatment including chemotherapy and radiation. However, the unfortunate part is that the cancer had metastasized and progressed to Stage IV.

Ficke and his wife brought a lawsuit against the Columbia University Hospital and Dr. Rabinowitz claiming a failure to correctly diagnose the melanoma, which the plaintiffs argued was present on the very first biopsy but missed by the defendants. The claim did not include lost income.

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