Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

A Florida jury has awarded $12 million for the death of a premature baby caused by medical malpractice. The parents contended in their suit that the hospital negligently accepted a transfer of the baby from another hospital, but did not have the appropriate specialists on its staff to deal with their baby’s infection. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

In Maryland and the District of Columbia, most hospitals can be classified as academic medical centers (like the Johns Hopkins Hospital, the University of Maryland Medical Center, George Washington University Medical Center or Georgetown University Hospital, etc.) or community hospitals (like Sinai Hospital, Harbor Hospital, Shady Grove Adventist, etc.). Maryland and District of Columbia hospitals also are labeled according to what type of trauma center they are.

The concept of a trauma center was developed at the University of Maryland Medical Center in the 1960s and 1970s by heart surgeon and shock researcher R Adams Cowley, who founded what became the Shock Trauma Center. Trauma centers in the United States are ranked by the American College of Surgeons (ACS), from level I (comprehensive service) to level III (limited-care). The different levels refer to the type of resources available in a trauma center and the number of patients admitted yearly.

A level I trauma center provides the highest level of surgical care to trauma patients. It has a full range of specialists and equipment available 24 hours a day and admits a minimum required annual volume of severely injured patients. A level I trauma center is required to have a certain number of surgeons and anesthesiologists on duty 24 hours a day at the hospital, an education program, preventive and outreach programs. Other required elements include 24-hour in-house coverage by general surgeons and prompt availability of care in varying specialties such as orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, anesthesiology, emergency medicine, radiology, internal medicine, oral and maxillofacial surgery, and critical care, which are needed to adequately respond and care for various forms of trauma that a patient may suffer. Additionally, a Level I center has a program of research, is a leader in trauma education and injury prevention, and is a referral resource for communities in nearby regions.

A level II trauma center works in collaboration with a Level I center. It provides comprehensive trauma care and supplements the clinical expertise of a level I institution. It provides 24-hour availability of all essential specialties, personnel, and equipment. Minimum volume requirements may depend on local conditions. These institutions are not required to have an ongoing program of research or a surgical residency program.

A level III trauma center does not have the full availability of specialists, but does have resources for emergency resuscitation, surgery, and intensive care of most trauma patients. A level III center has transfer agreements with level I or level II trauma centers that provide back-up resources for the care of exceptionally severe injuries.

Obviously, a Maryland or District of Columbia hospital can be liable for medical malpractice / medical negligence for failing to have the required specialist on the premises, or readily available as required by the ACS, if it causes an injury or damage.

An Indiana jury has decided that a medical clinic must pay $2.75 million to a former patient for failing to test a tumor removed from the woman’s foot. A doctor later found that a second tumor removed from the foot was malignant. Jurors awarded an additional $500,000 to the woman’s husband. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

This case involves a complete failure to test the first tumor, and the failure to alert the patient to the fact that the tumor wasn’t tested. That is a clear mistake, and is certainly medical negligence according to the standard of care. I have handled a number of cases before where tests were not properly done or interpreted.

In one such medical malpractice case in Maryland, a young girl’s leg was hurting, so her mother took her to a Baltimore hospital to be examined. The doctor didn’t want to do an x-ray, but the mother insisted. After the x-ray, the mother was told that she would be called if the x-ray was abnormal. No one ever called. Over the 8 months, the child’s leg pain got worse. When the mother decided to take her daughter to another hospital for a second opinion. That hospital asked the mother to get a copy of the x-rays from the first hospital. When the mother called the first hospital, they couldn’t find the x-rays. The mother then went to the first hospital in person, to try and get the x-rays. When she got there, she was told that the x-rays were just being read. She didn’t understand, as it has been many months since she and her daughter had been there. On her way to the second hospital, the mother got a call from the first hospital telling her that the x-ray showed evidence of bone cancer. It turned out that the films were never read until the day the mother went to pick up the films. That eight month delay in the bone cancer diagnosis allowed the cancer to spread / metastasize. As a result, the girl died before her 20th birthday. What a tragic case. Obviously, that medical malpractice case settled for a substantial amount.

In another case I handled, a young woman in Maryland had the recommended annual pap smears, which all were read as normal. But then, one year after having a normal pap smear, she had another one read as showing advanced cervical cancer. She came to see me and I ordered all of the slides from her previous pap smears. It turned out that 3 years worth of pap smears which were read as normal all showed signs of cervical cancer that were missed. Amazing. After filing suit, the case settled shortly before trial.

A New Jersey doctor's medical license has just been suspended after regulators determined that he performed the wrong surgery on a patient, by removing the wrong lung, then tried to cover up the error. The New Jersey Board found Dr. Santusht Perera removed a portion of the patient's right lung when he should have been removing a tumor in the left lung. According to the Board, the surgeon then told the patient that the right lung contained a life-threatening tumor, though there was no such growth. He also altered the patient's records to show he intended to operate on the right lung. The board determined that Perera's actions constituted gross negligence. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

While most medical care is good, sadly there are significant number of doctors and hospital staff who commit serious medical malpractice / medical mistakes each day. In the case above, the patient's healthy lung was removed while the cancerous lung was left unaltered. As if that is not bad enough, the doctor then tried to cover up his mistake. Like in this case, the doctor usually gets caught.

Unfortunately, I have been involved in a number of cases in which doctors and hospital personnel in the Baltimore, Maryland and Washington area have tried to cover up their medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical mistakes by changing or altering medical records. Surprisingly, it is not always hard to catch these people. After having reviewed hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of medical malpractice cases, I know what to look for in a medical chart, both in terms of what should be in there and what should not be in there. We also have the experience and resources to have a forensic document examiner test a document to determine whether there is anything unusual about the document.

For example, I was involved in one medcial malpractice case in Maryland where a doctor said he told my client to follow-up after an abnormal chest x-ray, but there was no subsequent visit. The doctor even pointed to an entry in his chart that he had written which said that he told the patient to follow-up. This was a critical issue in the case because if the doctor did not tell the patient to follow-up, everyone in the case agreed he would have committed malpractice. If he did tell the patient to follow-up and she didn't, she certainly would have lost the case because the jury would have found her to be guilty of contributory negligence. The client's family was sure that if she had been told to follow-up, she would have. But she was dead and so we couldn't have her deny the doctor's claim. So, I obtained the original medical record and had it tested by a forensic document examiner who was able to prove - by highly magnifying the section where the doctor allegedly told the patient to follow - that the line containing the follow-up recommendation was written with a different pen then the rest of the entry for that day. That was enough to get the case to settle! If necessary, we were prepared to have the ink on the medical record tested to determine the date on which it was written, but that wasn't necessary.

In another Maryland medcial malpractice case, a women died a couple of days after minimally invasive gallbladder surgery (called a laparoscopic cholecystectomy). Strangely to me, the surgeon did not dictate his operative report for months after the surgery. In fact, he waited to dictate it until after the woman's autopsy report came out. The autopsy showed that there had been a leak of bile from the gallbladder's cystic duct after the surgery. When I finally got my client's operative report, it was a full 3 pages long and went on and on about how he carefully did this, and carefully checked that before finishing the surgery. That operative note was suspicious to me because I had seen a number of operative reports from other gallbladder cases I had reviewed and all of those operative reports had been only a paragraph long and certainly no more than one page. When I took the surgeon's deposition, I purposely got him to say that his operative report in my client's case was typical of his operative reports in other gallbladder cases and that he would expect all his other gallbladder operative reports to look virtually the same as my client's. Right after the doctor's deposition, I subpoenaed the last 10 gallbladder operative reports that he generated before and after my client's surgery. When I got those reports, as I had suspected, all 20 were only one paragraph long - which was in stark contrast to our client's 3 page long operative report in which tjhe doctor claimed to check and double-check everything. At trial, the jury hated the doctor for lying under oath during his deposition, and trying to avoid responsibility for killing his patient, and rendered a verdict in excess of $3 million. That is what you can do when you know what to look for!!!!

A Delaware jury has awarded a family $1.6 million in a medical malpractice case in which the wrong prescription medicine was allegedly prescribed by a doctor. In this particular case, the woman was given too much of a heart medication for her kidneys to handle. Since she was on dialysis, her body couldn’t process the amount of the drug that they gave her and she died.
A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

These days, with more and more prescription drugs on the market, it is all to easy for doctors to make a mistake and prescribe the wrong medicine, or the wrong dose. Sometimes a doctor’s handwriting is so bad that the pharmacy can’t read the writing, and the pharmacy doesn’t call the doctor to clarify the handwriting, leading to serious and sometimes fatal prescription / medication errors.

As an attorney who is well known for being successful in handling many medical malpractice (medical negligence / medical mistake / medical error) cases in the Baltimore, Maryland and Washington areas, I am commonly asked by colleagues and friends whether I have ever had a case against a nursing home which a loved one is considering. Unfortunatley, I have handled medical malpractice / negligence cases involving almost a number of nurisng homes in the Baltimore-Washington area, including Genesis, Manor Care and Lorien. While the medical care at these nursing homes is generally good, there have been and still are instances of major medical mistakes that cause severe and permanent damages and injuries. I usually tell my colleagues and friends that, while the care generally is good at these nursing homes, they need to watch out for loved ones when they are in a nursing home. That means establishing a relationship with the aides, nurses and doctors who will be taking care of the patient, asking questions and visiting as frequently as possible to see what is going on.

A Fort Lauderdale, Florida jury Friday awarded a family $35 million in a medical malpractice case alleging that Broward General Medical Center caused permanent brain damage to their child during his delivery. As a result of the malpractice, the child is profoundly mentally disabled, can’t walk, can’t engage in routine activities of daily living and requires a lifetime of care. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

As I have repeatedly said before, birth trauma cases like this are some of the most difficult cases that Maryland medical malpractice attorneys pursue because they usually involve multiple expert witnesses, such as obstetricians, neonatologists, pediatric neurologists, placental pathologists, life care planners and economists. This makes them extremely time-consuming and expensive to pursue. Nevertheless, these cases are extremely important to pursue, so that compensation can be obtained for the parents and child, in order to provide the child with best medical and other care that the child can have, so as to maximize the child’s abilities and comfort. Nothing is more important.

While practicing the filed of medical malpractice in Baltimore, I have handled a number of these type of cases, and they almost always involve severe and permanent injuries. The parents usually don’t have enough money to provide the child with the medical and other care that the child needs, health insurance doesn’t give the child what it needed and government benefits are minimal to non-existent. When these cases are successful, they usually allow the family to give the child the medical and other care (like home care) that is needed.

Most Baltimore area hospitals have at one time have faced a medical malpractice case involving allegations of cerebral palsy or birth injury from a negligent delivery. These hospitals include Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins Bayview, University of Maryland Medical Center, Maryland General Hospital, Harbor Hospital, Mercy Medical Center, Sinai Hospital, Northwest Hospital, Greater Baltimore Medical Center, Franklin Square Hospital, Howard County General Hospital.

A Rhode Island man has been awarded $2 million due to allegations that he suffered brain damage because he did not receive proper care during open heart surgery at a Rhode Island hospital. The man alleged in his lawsuit that he got low amounts of oxygen to his brain during the 1998 operation. A copy of the article regarding the verdict can be found here.

These type of medcial malpractice cases can be catastrophic becuase of their severe and long-term consequences. As an attorney in Baltimore, I am frequently called upon to evalute whether there has been medical malpratice at two of the leading hospitals in the region, Johns Hopkins Hospital and the University of Maryland Medical System. They frequently perform some of the most cutting edge procedures known in medicine, including open heart surgery. Yet sometimes, these procedures have catastrophic results due to medical malpractice. When that happens, we investigate and pursue medical malpractice cases against Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland Medical System. Over the years, we generally have been very successful in these cases.

Under Maryland Rule 2-501(a), summary judgment is only appropriate where there is no dispute of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Therefore a motion for summary judgment should be denied where the opposing party has shown that "there is a genuine dispute as to a material fact by proffering facts which would be admissible as evidence." Beatty v. Trailmasters Products, Inc., 330 Md. 726, 737 (1993). "A material fact is a fact the resolution of which will somehow affect the outcome of the case." Carter v. Aramark Sports and Entertainment, 153 Md.App. 210, 224 (2003) (quoting Sterling v. Johns Hopkins Hosp., 145 Md.App. 161, 167 (2002), cert. denied, 371 Md. 264 (2002)).

"When ruling on a motion for summary judgment, a court must view the facts, including all inferences drawn therefrom, in the light most favorable to the opposing party." Carter, 153 Md.App. at 224, (citing Sterling, 145 Md. App. at 168, quoting Jones v. Mid-Atlantic Funding Co., 362 Md. 661, 676 (2001)). "The moving party bears the burden of establishing the absence of a genuine issue of material fact." Carter, 153 Md.App. at 224, (citing Sterling, 145 Md.App. at 168, citing Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 U.S. 144, 157 (1970)), therefore the Defendant must show the absence of disputed facts. Furthermore, the standard is such that the trial court is not to draw inferences in favor of the moving party. Rather, if the facts are undisputed, but these facts "are susceptible of more than one permissible inference, the choice between those inferences should not be made as a matter of law." Carter, 153 Md.App. at 225, (citing, Porter v. General Boiler Casing Co., 284 Md. 402, 413 (1979), quoting Fenwick Motor Co. v. Fenwick, 258 Md. 134, 138 (1970)).

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