Justia Lawyer Rating for Robert D. Kreisman

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The family of a woman who died during childbirth has settled an Illinois wrongful death case for $14 million. The medical malpractice case resulted not only in the mother’s death, but also involved a child born with brain damage at Chicago’s Advocate Trinity Hospital. The settlement was reached in Sidonia Lawson, etc. v. Advocate Health Hospitals Corp., Cannon Vernon, MD, Jamiere Y. Smith, MD, et al., No. 09 L 12090.

In 2007, the 32 year-old decedent, Sabrina Lawson, went to Advocate Trinity Hospital with labor contractions. While there, the staff induced her with medications to try and speed along her delivery. However, while receiving the labor medications, Lawson’s baby began to show signs of fetal distress.

In such instances, the medical standard of care requires an emergency cesarean section; however, there was a delay of almost seven hours. By the time the baby was born, he had suffered from brain damage as a result of lack of oxygen and blood flow to his brain.

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Prior to the 1980s, the risk of transmitting HIV through transplanted organs was fairly high, at a time when even blood transfusions put patients at risk for contracting the deadly virus. However, in 1985, HIV antibody testing became available, which enabled doctors and medical staff to test to see whether organs were infected with HIV. Therefore in today’s medical climate it is unlikely that an organ transplant recipient would receive organs infected with HIV.

However, in 2007, four Chicago patients were found to have transmitted HIV by way of their transplanted organs. While the transplant surgeries were done at three different Chicago Hospitals, each of the four patients received organs from the same organ donor. At the time of the transplant surgery the donor was not known to be infected with HIV. His organs passed the standard tests for HIV antibodies; however, those tests could not have detected HIV if the donor acquired the infection within a few weeks of his death.

Critics of the way these 2007 transplant surgeries were handled argue that a nucleic acid test could have detected the HIV infection earlier. However, the nucleic acid test was not approved by the FDA until 2009 and even today is not effective 100 percent of the time; too many false positives make the nucleic acid test unreliable as an universal screening tool.

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An Illinois jury entered an Illinois medical malpractice verdict of $5.1 million against an Illinois surgeon and surgical center who failed to diagnose a perforated bowel sustained during pelvic surgery. The plaintiff in Gwendolyn Tate v. Dr. Harrith M. Hasson and The Surgery Center at 900 North Michigan Avenue LLC, 10 L-2437. developed a severe case of sepsis and was left a quadriplegic.

Ms. Tate had been treating with the defendant, Dr. Hasson, for chronic pelvic pain and uterine fibroids, which are non-cancerous growths in the uterus. Dr. Hasson, a practicing obstetrician, endocrinologist, and surgeon, recommended that the plaintiff undergo a surgery to treat her pain and symptoms.

In 2002, Ms. Tate underwent the recommended surgery at Surgery Center at 900 N. Michigan Avenue, LLC.. During the procedure, Dr. Hasson accidently perforated the plaintiff’s bowel. While the perforated bowel might not have been medical malpractice on its own, the failure to recognize that the organ had been perforated was an example of surgical negligence. Patients should be monitored for signs of bleeding and infection following any type of surgery; a failure to do so is below the standard of care.

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An Illinois jury found in favor of the defendant doctor in the Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit of The Estate of Eileen Olson, deceased v. Dr. Joseph F. Pensabene, Rockford Cardiology Associates, Ltd., 06 L-73. The medical malpractice case revolved around allegations against the defendant cardiologist of committing surgical errors and negligence which led to the wrongful death of the 68 year-old woman.

In 2004, Ms. Olson was admitted to St. Anthony Hospital under the care of her cardiologist, Dr. Pensabene, for the removal of a blood clot that was blocking the circulation in her left arm. The decedent had pre-existing conditions of asthma, diabetes, and hypertension. Dr. Pensabene performed an angiogram, which is a type of x-ray that uses both dye and fluroscopy to record a patient’s blood flow through their arteries and veins.

When performing Ms. Olson’s angiogram, Dr. Pensabene used a SmartNeedle catheter with an ultrasonic tip. There was no problem with the catheter entering the decedent’s body via her femoral artery and passing through her groin. It was when the catheter entered the areas of the left brachial and radial arteries that Dr. Pensabene identified the large blood clot.

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A Chicago nursing home malpractice case recently received an Illinois jury verdict of a little over $2 million in Estate of William Sloan, deceased v. South Shore Nursing & Rehabilitation Center LLC, et al. 09 L 14819. Sloan was brought under the Illinois Nursing Home Care Act and the Illinois Wrongful Death Act, with issues of nursing home negligence lying at the heart of the case.

The allegations of Illinois nursing home malpractice in Sloan centered not on below standard medical care of the nursing home resident, but rather on issues of improper supervision of the nursing home resident. Sloan’s ultimate death was the result of severe burns sustained after Sloan attempted to light a cigarette, but instead set himself on fire. His estate claimed that the fact that he even had the cigarette was a direct result of the nursing home staff’s failure to adequately supervise Sloan.

Eighty-four year old William Sloan was a nursing home resident of Chicago’s South Shore Nursing Home. One evening in 2004, when the nursing home assistants were assisting other residents to bed, Sloan was left alone in his bedroom. Unbeknownst to the nursing home staff, Sloan had obtained a cigarette and matches from an unknown source. As he attempted to light his cigarette, Sloan dropped a lit match on his lap and set fire to himself.

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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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