Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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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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The plaintiff in this case, Lee Ann Sharbono, filed a lawsuit claiming medical negligence against the defendant Dr. Mark Hilborn, a board-certified radiologist. In the lawsuit it was alleged that Dr. Hilborn had chosen not to timely diagnose Sharbono’s breast cancer.  After the trial, the jury found for Dr. Hilborn and against Sharbono.  She filed post-trial motions for judgment notwithstanding the verdict, for new trial and for rehearing, all of which the trial court denied. This appeal was taken.

In August 2006, Sharbono was diagnosed with breast cancer in her left breast.  It had spread to her nearby lymph nodes under her left arm. She underwent extensive treatment including a modified radical mastectomy of her left breast.

The lawsuit in this case arose out of a diagnosis that was made by Dr. Hilborn in November 2004.  Sharbono, who was then 39 years old, went to see her primary care physician because she was experiencing fatigue, weight gain, aches and pain.  The doctor ordered a screening mammogram. That mammogram and an ultrasound were claimed to have been misinterpreted.

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Michael Mals, 57, underwent a hip replacement at Lutheran General Hospital on Aug. 14, 2008.  He was given Coumadin, a blood thinner, to prevent deep vein thrombosis (DVT).  Three days later he was transferred to a nursing home for rehab where his INR (international normalized ratio) became supratherateutic and Coumadin was discontinued.  In other words, his blood became too thin for his well-being. 

Mals was readmitted to Lutheran General Hospital on Aug. 28, 2008 with an elevated INR level, suspected internal bleeding and an elevated white blood count. He was diagnosed with a bleed within the left iliacus muscle and bilateral DVTs.  He was restarted on Coumadin, and he returned to the nursing home on Sept. 2.

On Sept. 11, 2008, Mals was readmitted to Lutheran General with elevated INR and anemia, placed on Lovenox anticoagulant therapy and sent back to the rehab facility.

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A Will County, Ill., jury entered a $1,066,000 verdict against an orthopedic surgeon, David Burt, M.D.  Virginia Faletti, 82, underwent endoscopic carpal tunnel release surgery on her right wrist at Edward Hospital.  The surgery was done to relieve pressure on the median nerve because of crowding within the carpal tunnel of the wrist. 

Dr. Burt, however, cut the median nerve during the surgery.  After the procedure, Faletti felt pain and numbness in the right hand and wrist, but Dr. Burt chose not to recognize that he had cut the median nerve.  Instead, Dr. Burt prescribed medicine for the nerve pain as well as a brace and physical therapy, which did not resolve Faletti’s symptoms. 

Later, Faletti sought a second opinion and was eventually diagnosed with a transected median nerve by a neurosurgeon.  The neurosurgeon then referred her to a plastic reconstructive surgeon who performed nerve repair surgery. During this procedure, the doctor noted the right median nerve had been completely transected except for one nerve fiber. 

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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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Andrew Hanson, 49, was injured at his job.  He went in to see his family practice physician, Dr. Ronald Davis, who diagnosed a crushed injury to his chest.  Hanson then underwent a work-up, which showed a left chest contusion.

The next day, Hanson experienced other symptoms, including shortness of breath.  Dr. Davis told Hanson that his injury would take time to heal. Two days later, Hanson met with Dr. Davis; Hanson was suffering from extreme hypotension (low blood pressure) among other symptoms.  Dr. Davis referred Hanson for a CT scan, and he was then diagnosed as having a heart attack.

He is now totally disabled and unable to continue his job as a truck driver; until his injury and illness, he was earning about $50,000 a year.

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Thomas Jackson, 57, underwent a hernia repair surgery by a general surgeon, the defendant, Dr. Kenneth Goldman.  Hours after the surgery, Jackson complained of severe stomach pain.  His condition deteriorated overnight;  the next morning Jackson developed a fever and a rapid pulse.

The hospital staff noted a decrease in urine output and an elevated white blood cell count, a sign of possible infectious process. The next day Jackson went into organ failure.

Jackson was later diagnosed as having an infection resulting in an intestinal perforation. He then went into surgery to repair the perforation, but spent six months in intensive care, where he developed severe pressure sores.

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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 November 2008, 26-year-old Heather Hinshaw underwent gallbladder surgery at Trinity Medical Center in Rock Island, Ill.  The general surgeon who did the surgery thought he saw a stone in the common bile duct during an intraoperative cholangiogram, which is a procedure using a catheter to inject dye into the gallbladder to better visualize the blockage using X-ray.  He referred the patient to a gastroenterologist, the defendant Ahmad Cheema, M.D. 

A few hours after the gallbladder surgery, Dr. Cheema decided to perform an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP), but he did not look at the cholangiogram results or discuss the case with the referring general surgeon.

Hinshaw did not have jaundice, yellowing of the skin, or any other symptoms of a stone in the common bile duct at the time. During the ERCP procedure, Dr. Cheema introduced a guidewire into the pancreatic duct and the wire curved back on itself puncturing the patient’s pancreatic duct.

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