Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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A Chicago medical malpractice lawsuit involving allegations of a botched surgery returned a verdict of $2,350,000 in Smola v. Jeffrey M. Sheedy, D.O., 05 L-4862 (IL Cook County). The plaintiff accused the defendant Dr. Sheedy of committing surgical errors, including severing his ulnar nerve during a tendon reattachment surgery, which resulted in Smola’s permanent complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS).

While at work as a maintenance mechanic for UPS, plaintiff James Smola tore his left distal biceps tendon. Smola was referred to Dr. Sheedy, an orthopedic surgeon, who recommended a tendon reattachment procedure that was performed at St. James Hospital – Olympia Fields and was the subject of the present Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit.

At the Chicago jury trial, the plaintiff alleged that Dr. Sheedy had violated the medical standard of care when he severed the plaintiff’s ulnar artery during the tendon reattachment procedure, which led to his subsequent median nerve damage and CRPS. Furthermore, plaintiff’s attorneys alleged that the surgical errors were in part due to Dr. Sheedy’s negligence in choosing not to properly protect the plaintiff’s vital arteries during the biceps tendon repair.

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A Chicago medical malpractice verdict was reversed after an Illinois appellate court found that the testimony of the defendant’s cardiology expert had violated an agreed order. Luis San Roman, et al. v. Children’s Heart Center, Ltd., d/b/a Rush’s Children’s Heart Center, et al., No. 1-09-1217, will be remanded to the trial court for a retrial that will exclude the defendant’s cardiology expert’s testimony.

The case involves allegations of surgical errors during a procedure performed on plaintiff Luis San Roman when he was a baby. Luis was born with cyanosis and was referred to as a “blue baby” because he was born with transposition of the aorta, a congenital heart condition that deprives the body of oxygen. In addition to his congenital heart disease, Luis also had a condition of narrowing of the pulmonary artery.

In order to correct his congenital heart defects, a heart procedure was performed shortly after his birth. Chicago pediatric cardiologist Carlos Ruiz, recommended that Luis undergo a heart catheterization process which would insert a stent into Luis’s left ventricle. This procedure was an alternative to open-heart surgery and was eventually performed at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center.

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Radiation therapy is a common treatment for a large range of cancers and has been responsible for saving, or at least extending, many peoples’ lives. However, the basic premise of radiation therapy involves targeting and killing cancerous cells in one’s body. And while properly administered radiation therapy can save lives, when hospitals and doctors administer too much radiation it can result in negative effects for the treating patient.

Overdoses of radiation is becoming more and more widespread amongst cancer patients. A recent report of Evanston’s Northshore University HealthSystem, a Chicago-area hospital, provided one such example. A 50 year-old mother of three was administered dangerously high doses of radiation when the hospital staff made radiology errors involving the administration of her radiation doses. The young Illinois resident went from an active, vibrant person pre-radiation to a virtual invalid post-radiation and now resides in an Illinois nursing home.

This woman was just one of three oncology patients who received an overdose of radiation at Evanston Hospital. All three instances of the radiation errors were allegedly the result of faulty linear particle accelerators. These accelerators are used to focus the radiation on the cancerous cells and are commonly used for stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS).

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A Cook County jury awarded $3,270,000 in a Chicago birth injury lawsuit. The verdict was against both the delivering obstetrician and her physicians’ group, both of which the jury found responsible for the brachial plexus injuries to the 11 lb. baby.

The infant’s 33 year-old mother had undergone two previous vaginal deliveries, and had experienced a relatively uneventful pregnancy. However, both of those two prior deliveries were of babies who weighed around 8 lbs., which is relatively large for a petite woman like the plaintiff’s mother. One of the claims made by the plaintiff’s attorneys in the Chicago birth injury lawsuit was that a cesarean section should have been recommended and performed due to the baby’s higher weight; he weighted 11 lbs. at birth.

The mother’s prenatal care was handled by Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group, which is affiliated with Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital. While her prenatal care was relatively uneventful, she did gain 58 lbs. during the course of her delivery, which was relatively high considering that the mother was only 5’2″. Again, plaintiff’s attorneys in her Illinois birth injury case alleged that there should have been indications that the baby was going to be large and potentially difficult to deliver vaginally.

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Federal preemption of medical device liability lawsuits has been a volatile issue in recent years, with the courts typically preempting product liability lawsuits citing violations of individual state safety standards. However, in Bausch v. Stryker Corporation, et al., No. 09-3434, the issue was whether a product defect claim citing federal safety standard violations was also preempted by that product having federal approval. While a Chicago federal district court had dismissed Ms. Bausch’s claim, that decision was recently overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. That Court of Appeals decision permitted Mr. Bausch to pursue his claim in federal court.

The case facts of the Bausch medical device lawsuit involve a hip replacement 56 year-old Margaret Bausch underwent, during which she received a Trident brand ceramic-on-ceramic hip replacement system manufactured by Stryker Corporation. The prosthetic hip device ended up failing and required an additional surgery to have it removed.
The specific type of prosthetic hip Ms. Bausch received was approved for sale in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but was later recalled due to a failure to comply with federal standards. In her Chicago medical device lawsuit, Bausch’s attorneys cited Stryker’s failure to comply with federal standards during the manufacturing process of its prosthetic hip devices.

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The Illinois Appellate Court, Third District has affirmed a ruling by an Illinois circuit court judge denying the defendant nursing home’s motion to dismiss and to compel arbitration in an Illinois nursing home abuse lawsuit. That ruling opened the way for the plaintiff to pursue the lawsuit against the nursing home in the courtroom and with a jury to weigh the facts of the case, rather than a closed arbitration setting.

In August 2007, the plaintiff, Marilee Curto, signed an agreement with the defendant Pekin Manors, a residential nursing home, to admit and care for her husband, Charles Curto. The contract named Charles as the resident and Marilee as the “guardian/responsible party”. Marilee signed the form as the “legal representative”. Charles did not sign the document.

In a separate agreement, the nursing home asked Marilee, and she agreed to sign an arbitration agreement providing that “any and all disputes arising hereunder shall be submitted to binding arbitration and not to a court for determination.” In the arbitration agreement, the parties waived their rights to a jury trial.

In August 2009, Marilee filed a nursing home abuse complaint against Pekin Manors pursuant to the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act for Charles’ injuries that he suffered while he was a resident. The complaint also sought damages by Charles’ estate under the Illinois Wrongful Death Act and the Illinois Survival Act.

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A jury has awarded $1.5 million to the family of an infant who died at Central DuPage Hospital in April 2005. The Illinois medical malpractice verdict was reached after a trial in DuPage County, Illinois regarding the death of Isaac Diaz, who was five days old when he was taken to the emergency department at Central DuPage Hospital in Diaz, etc. v. Central DuPage Hospital, et al., No. 06 L 448.

The child had seen his pediatrician earlier that afternoon, but started vomiting later in the day. There was also blood found in his diaper. The Illinois wrongful death lawsuit brought by the parents alleged that the Central DuPage Hospital staff chose not to diagnose the infant’s twisted bowel. It was alleged and argued at the medical malpractice trial that the hospital and its staff took too long to act on the child’s signs and symptoms of a twisted bowel.

Waiting more than four hours to act, the family submitted evidence that the hospital and its staff began applying intravenous fluids, antibiotics and was then transferred to a unit with a pediatric surgeon, but it was too late. The hospital nurse also then called Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago where the boy was transferred. Isaac died the next day.

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A Cook County jury found in favor of the estate of a 52 year-old Illinois woman who died of sepsis and multi-organ failure during her admission to Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, Illinois. The estate claimed that Illinois medical negligence occurred when the hospital failed to recognize and respond to the decedent’s early signs and symptoms of sepsis, which led to her ultimate demise. The jury awarded $500,000 against the hospital in Estate of Hackl v. Advocate Health & Hospitals Corp., et al., 08 L 7880, an Illinois medical malpractice case that highlights the disastrous effects that can occur when there is a communication breakdown in a hospital setting.

The decedent presented to the emergency room at Good Shepherd Hospital, a hospital in Chicago’s northwest suburbs that is affiliated with Advocate Health Care. At the time she was complaining of vomiting and generalized weakness. An emergency room physician noted that she had low levels of potassium and administered potassium and general fluids. In addition, her fingers and toes were blue during the initial examination. While the decedent did improve after receiving the fluids, she was still not ready to be discharged.

A complete blood count (CBC) was also ordered while the patient was in the ER, which revealed elevated band levels and low platelet counts. These abnormal lab results can indicate an infection; however, these results were not noted in the admitting physician’s hospital notes. The attending physician, Dr. Small, had treated the plaintiff for many years and was familiar with her medical history, including the placement of a cardiac pacemaker, cardiomyopathy, renal failure, eczema, and a lumbar fusion that required her to take narcotic medications for pain.

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A Cook County Illinois jury has entered a $1.1 million verdict in favor of a 62 year-old woman who fell at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois after her knee replacement surgery. As a result of the fall, it was claimed that the new personal injuries sustained to her knee kept her disabled for more than 3 years. The Illinois medical negligence claim was filed in Cook County, Illinois; Shiffman v. Northwest Community Hospital, No. 07 L 9292.
At the time that the Illinois medical malpractice occurred, Arlyne Shiffman was a patient at Northwest Community Hospital. She had undergone a total left knee replacement surgery and was on her second day of recovery when the fall occurred. According to the Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit, Ms. Shiffman had been left alone by the nursing staff while up to the commode and was later found on the floor near the commode.
As a result of her fall, Ms. Shiffman’s surgical wound reopened, leaving it more susceptible to infection. The plaintiff did in fact contract an infection and required three additional surgeries, including a removal of the now-infected knee prosthesis. Ms. Shiffman also needed an antibiotic spacer inserted into her knee, which was left in for three months to ensure she remained infection-free. Her last, and hopefully final, surgery was a re-implantation of her knee prosthesis.

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An Illinois jury found for the plaintiff in a recent Illinois surgical malpractice lawsuit. The medical malpractice case involved claims that the defendant ophthalmologist performed an unnecessary and improper surgical procedure on the plaintiff, leaving her blind and with the loss of one of her eyes. After a one week trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff for $1.75 million in Larson v. Miller Eye Center.
At the time of the Illinois surgical malpractice, 75 year-old Shirley Larson had been a patient of ophthalmologist Dr. Miller for more than 13 years. The majority of her treatment under Dr. Miller was for glaucoma, a condition in which increased intraocular pressure promotes vision loss by causing damage to the optic nerve.

In 2003, Dr. Miller recommended that Larson undergo a new surgical procedure to treat her glaucoma. The procedure was known as endoscopic cyclophotocoagulation (ECP), which was touted as an advancement due to it allowing the surgeon to target the tissue to be treated by direct visualization with less potential damage to surrounding tissue. The ECP would include an incision in the eye, with a laser being used to reduce the amount of fluid produced by the eye.

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