Posted on October 09, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

In order to encourage finality of potential claims – and to discourage the filing of claims after evidence has been lost and memories have faded – all states have enacted a "statute of limitations." A statute of limitations is a law that sets forth the amount of time that a potential plaintiff has in which to file his or her case after the incident giving rise to the case occurs. If the case is not filed by the deadline, the plaintiff will forever be prohibited from bringing that claim. Accordingly, the importance of understanding the statute of limitations and keeping track of the deadline cannot be overstated.

Each state has its own statute of limitations. Additionally, in many states, a statute of limitations for one type of claim may be different than the statute of limitations for another type of claim. For example, a negligence case could have a three-year statute of limitations while a defamation case could have a one-year statute of limitations.

Maryland Medical Malpractice claims have their own statute of limitations, which is set forth in Courts & Judicial Proceedings § 5-109 of the Maryland Annotated Code. A copy of the Maryland medical malpractice statute of limitations provision can be found here. Under Maryland law – and with some limited exceptions – a potential medical malpractice plaintiff must file their lawsuit within the earlier of five years of the time of the injury or three years of the date the injury was discovered. This means that, conceivably, your medical malpractice claim could be extinguished before you ever realize you have one, i.e., if it takes you more than five years to realize that you have been injured by a medical mistake.

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 Posted on October 02, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

This week, a North Carolina jury awarded $7.5 million to a gentleman whose botched colon surgery left him with severe and debilitating complications. In June of 2010, the patient underwent surgery to remove a portion of his colon due to a potentially cancerous mass that had been found. It was alleged that when the surgeon connected the new ends of the colon together, there was a leak. The patient in this case became extremely ill following the surgery. He suffered from a prolonged period of low blood pressure as well as kidney failure, infection and internal bleeding. He also underwent two additional surgeries during which his physicians were unable to locate the source of the infection. A colonoscopy later that same year revealed a leak in the area where a portion of the colon had been resected. A fourth surgery was then performed to repair the leak and mitigate the resulting internal damage.

When a perforation occurs in the gastrointestinal tract, substances such as fecal matter, food and bacteria can leak in to the abdominal cavity which can cause infection, organ damage and even death. Perforations of the colon can happen on their own but, more commonly, occur during surgeries in the abdomen. Symptoms of a colon injury include fever, pain, increased heartbeat, increased respiratory rate and distension of the abdomen. Generally speaking, a perforated colon can be diagnosed using the CT Scan technology that is available today.

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 Posted on September 23, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

Lithium is an often-prescribed psychiatric medication used to treat select health conditions such as bipolar disorder and depression. Doctors have long understood that extended lithium intake can have long-term side effects most often effecting the kidneys and thyroid gland. Specifically, lithium can reduce the ability of the kidneys to concentrate urine, leading to dilution and polyuria (excessive urination). Lithium is not metabolized and is excreted almost exclusively through the kidneys. Monitoring kidney function is therefore an essential component of ongoing lithium therapy.

The most common early symptoms of lithium toxicity are abdominal pain, loss of urinary control, constipation, weakness and tremors. Symptoms associated with moderate to severe lithium toxicity include an altered mental status associated with dysarthria (motor speech disorder affecting muscles in the mouth/face), ataxia (lack of muscle coordination affecting speech/walking/eye movements), diarrhea, nausea, shaking or trembling and impaired cognitive function. Chronic lithium users also are at a heightened risk for developing nephrogenic diabetes insipidus (NDI), a form of diabetes characterized by excessive or uncontrolled urination. NDI is considered the most severe complication of lithium toxicity and patients with NDI must be closely monitored for dehydration due to their excretion of extraordinarily large volumes of urine. The combination of increasing levels of lithium and severe dehydration will, if not timely treated, result in acute toxicity of the kidney. Unfortunately, even after the acute toxicity is resolved, a significant number of patients suffer permanent neurologic damage.

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 Posted on September 18, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

One of the most shockingly common types of medical malpractice occurs when a surgeon and his or her surgical team concludes a procedure without removing all of the foreign objects used on the patient during the surgery. Such objects may include sponges, clamps, gauze, surgical instruments and even needles. If a foreign object is left in the body after the surgery is completed, life-threatening conditions can – and often do – ensue. These objects can cause severe pain and often result in, among other things, significant infections and organ damage which can lead to death if not timely and appropriately recognized and removed. Of course, at a minimum, the negligent failure to remove all foreign objects from the body before closing the incision necessitates an additional painful surgery to remove the object which means additional hospitalization, increased medical bills and, sometimes, unnecessary lost wages.

Experienced medical malpractice attorneys understand that often the best way to pursue these types of cases is to show that the surgeon violated his or her own hospital’s policies, guidelines and procedures. Most hospitals and surgery centers have written policies that govern how to avoid leaving a foreign object inside the body, such as tracking the objects that go in and counting the objects as they are removed to ensure that none are left before the incision is closed. The pre and post-surgery count also should be documented in the patient’s medical records.

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 Posted on September 11, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

At the conclusion of a three-week trial, a Baltimore City jury last week awarded $28 million to a 47 year-old man whose perforated ulcer went undiagnosed, resulting in significant complications and life-altering deteriorations in his health. The man had a history of Crohn’s disease, a chronic inflammatory condition of the gastrointestinal tract. However, his Chron’s had not caused him any significant trouble since a surgical procedure in 2000.

In May of 2011, the patient presented to an area hospital with severe, burning left-sided pain radiating to his chest. Rather than rule out an upper gastrointestinal illness, the treating physician treated him for a flare-up of his Chron’s and discharged the patient thereafter. Some eight days later, the patient returned to the hospital with nearly identical symptoms and, again, the treating physicians failed to consider an upper gastrointestinal illness. As the result of the misdiagnosis, a duodenal ulcer was perforated. An ulcer is an open sore or lesion, usually found on the skin or mucous membrane areas of the body. A duodenal ulcer is a sore or lesion that occurs in the upper area of the small intestine.

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 Posted on September 04, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

Earlier this year, a Detroit jury awarded $21 million to the family of a woman who died following a brain surgery that she was never supposed to undergo. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here. The 81 year-old presented to the hospital in January of 2012 for treatment of her bilateral jaw displacement (dislocated jaw). Unfortunately, upon her admission, hospital staff mixed up her CT Scan results with those of another patient, causing the doctors to believe that this woman had bleeding on her brain requiring emergency surgery.

Doctors immediately took her to the operating room where they drilled five holes into her head and remove the right side of her skull. Upon surgically reaching the woman’s brain, no bleed was found. Because of the woman’s age and health, she was unable to recover from the brain surgery and died after 60 days on life support. There also was an allegation in the lawsuit that the hospital attempted to cover up its mistake. The plaintiffs’ attorney was quoted in the article as saying that this procedure was "something that can be done in a dentist chair [but that] instead they took off the right side of her head, and killed her." Interestingly, the jury at one point during deliberations sent a note to the judge asking whether they could demand that the hospital apologize for its "wrongful and outrageous conduct." The hospital vowed to appeal.

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 Posted on August 31, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

Not all medical malpractice lawsuits are decided by a jury. In some circumstances – such as those in which the Defendant doctor is an employee of the federal government – a judge decides whether the physician breached the standard of care and, if so, how much money to award. This is called a "bench trial." In a recent bench trial in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, a Federal Judge awarded the victim of a medical mistake $3.2 million.

In the Arizona case it was alleged that the Plaintiff – a board certified orthopedic surgeon with subspecialty training in spine surgery – consulted his primary care physician for a shoulder injury he sustained while lifting weights. That physician referred him for an MRI of the shoulder. It was determined that the Plaintiff would require rotator cuff surgery and so he was referred to the Defendant-doctor, an employee of the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, for the procedure. The MRI also revealed what was interpreted by the Radiologist to be a soft tissue mass in the shoulder. The Defendant, however, interpreted the MRI to show type of mass that was fluid-based "containing joint debris." The Defendant told the Plaintiff that he would remove the fluid during the rotator cuff surgery. He did not, however, discuss any other type of mass with the Plaintiff and did not seek consent to remove any other type of mass.

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 Posted on August 28, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

No matter the jurisdiction, most jurors who are seated to hear a medical malpractice case/trial carry with them some inherent biases. In fact, it has been our experience that many jurors and inclined to give doctors a "pass" in certain circumstances because the doctor was trying to help the patient, and certainly not trying to deliberately hurt the patient. Moreover, many jurors have family and friends who are in the health care industry and thus they are naturally biased in favor of those individuals, no doubt after hearing the "horror" stories of allegedly unfounded medical malpractice claims. As a result, many jurors will actually scrutinize the Plaintiff’s case for any reason that they can find to blame the Plaintiff for the injury or adverse result. These inherent biases can often be difficult to overcome in a week or two-week trial. One way to combat these biases is to use the defendant doctor or defendant hospital’s own policies and guidelines against them.

The majority of hospitals and/or physicians in today’s health care industry have developed clinical practice guidelines for how to treat certain conditions. These guidelines give recommendations about examinations to perform when confronted with certain signs and symptoms, certain tests to perform, certain medications a patient should receive and the timeframe within which all of these things should occur so as to provide to the best care to a patient and/or rule out potentially life-threatening conditions. For example, when a patient comes into a hospital complaining of a sudden onset of chest pain, most hospitals follow a cardiovascular guideline, taking steps to rule out the potentially life-threatening conditions like a heart attack, pulmonary embolism (blood clot to lung) and an aortic dissection. Such steps include performing an EKG, ordering a CT scan of the Chest, drawing blood to perform serial laboratory studies to look at certain markers. In short, these guidelines are adopted by hospitals and health care providers to try and prevent common errors. The guidelines are premised upon the belief that health care providers are human and injuries are inevitable without checklists and systems in place to prevent the same.

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 Posted on August 24, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

After a two-week trial this month, a Pennsylvania jury awarded more than $12 million to a 53 year-old man who became paralyzed after emergency room physicians delayed in recognizing and treating his spinal epidural abscess. According to the National Institute of Health, a spinal epidural abscess is defined as a rare disorder caused by infection in the area between the bones of the spine and the membranes covering the spinal cord. Although not always able to be determined, the source is often bacteria that spread from other infections in the body, such as a urinary tract infection.

In the Pennsylvania case, the patient presented to Delaware County Memorial Hospital in June of 2011 complaining of neck pain and tingling in his left arm. His symptoms worsened overnight; he developed a fever, was having difficulty walking and was unable to urinate. These are classic symptoms of an infectious process in the spine. An infectious disease specialist was appropriately consulted the following day and a cervical epidural abscess in the neck was suspected. The infectious disease specialist ordered a stat (immediate) MRI but, unfortunately, the hospital Radiologist incorrectly interpreted the results as showing no signs of abscess or spinal cord compression. Accordingly, transfer to a facility with the proper capabilities to care for this patient was delayed an additional day and, in the meantime, his condition continued to deteriorate. By the time the accuracy of the radiologist’s reading of the stat MRI was questioned, the damage done to the patient’s spinal cord had become irreversible.

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 Posted on August 21, 2015 in Medical Malpractice

In the context of any kind of medical malpractice lawsuit, there are generally two types of damages that can be claimed by the Plaintiff and/or ultimately awarded by a judge or jury: Non-Economic Damages and Economic Damages. Many times, our clients struggle with understanding the differences between these two types of damages and it is important to understand the distinction.

Economic damages are financial costs of an injured party’s trauma, including things such as past medical bills, future medical bills, future care costs and past and future wage/earnings loss. Future care costs, in particular, can often times range in the millions of dollars depending on the age of the injured party and the severity of the injuries suffered. For example, if a newborn infant has suffered a brain injury as the result of the negligence of an obstetrician, a medical expert known as a life care planner is often hired to project what types of care, equipment and services that child will require for the rest of their life, at each stage of their life. These types of damages include everything from the patient’s medications, motorized wheelchairs, physical/occupational/speech therapies, nursing care, in-home attendant care, etc. Other types of economic damages include the cost of modifying an injured party’s home to make it handicapped accessible for them or the provision of a modified van or car to allow them to operate it safely within the scope of their physical limitations. With respect to past or future loss of earnings/wages, once again, these damages can add up into the millions depending on the age of the plaintiff. In many instances, our office will retain an economist to examine what the injured party was earning prior to his/her injury and project those earnings forward to that individual’s reasonable work life expectancy (e.g., age 62, 65, 67 or 70). For individuals who are injured prior to the time that they enter the workforce, our economists are able to make projections as to their anticipated income based upon the education levels and work histories of their parents or guardians. There is no cap on economic damages.

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