Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

Police in Boston and the local district attorney's office recently defended their decision to hand over a possibly faulty ventilator to the manufacturer to let it examine the device that shut down during a power outage and led to the death of a 15-year-old. There is serious concern that sending it back to the manufacturer, Pulmonetic, without any independent oversight could result in evidence not being preserved or possible destroyed. The machine appears to be one of more than 10,000 machines that were recalled by the company in 2004 because of the potential for the backup battery to fail.

Normally, when there is potential or actual litigation in a product liability case, a potentially defective product is not examined without all sides to the litigation being present, to ensure that everybody agrees on how to examine the product, to make sure that no testing is done that could destroy evidence. Whenever I have been involved in a case involving a defective medical device or other product, I make sure that someone from my office and/or my expert witness is present at the testing to ensure that there is no destruction of evidence.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court issued a written decision yesterday in a medical malpractice case, finding that doctors can be held liable for medical negligence that reduces a patient’s chance of survival, even if the patient’s probability for recovery was already less than 50 percent. The Massachusetts Supreme Court’s ruling came in a closely watched medical malpractice case. In 2004, a jury awarded $1 million to the family of a man whose cancer was overlooked by a doctor. The court upheld the jury’s award in its decision, ruling that Massachusetts law is such that if a doctor’s negligence reduces or eliminates the patient’s chance for recovery, the doctor still is liable for damages. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

In Maryland medical malpractice cases, the law is different than in Massachusetts. In Maryland, in a case where a plaintiff seeks to prove that a doctor or hospital’s negligent failure to diagnose and/or treat cancer case has or will cause them to die, the plaintiff must prove that the doctor or hospital’s conduct caused them to go from having a probability of surviving the cancer (something greater than 50 percent) to having a probability of not surviving the cancer (something less than 50 percent). I have had many such cases. But if a patient only had a 40 percent probability of surviving the cancer before the malpractice, and now due to the malpractice the patient only has a 20 percent chance of surviving the cancer, that is considered a “loss of chance,” which Maryland does not recognize.

A Pittsburgh jury has found that the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center at Shadyside was negligent in a patient's death and awarded $2.5 million for wrongful death. The case alleged that a young man died after a brain abscess was not treated in time by the staff at the hospital. The jury actually issued a statement saying, "It is our belief that UPMC Shadyside's policies, culture, and lack of competent supervision resulted in the death of Michael Rettger." The young man, who was an accountant, was in West Virginia in November 2003 to perform an audit of another hospital when he began vomiting and reporting a headache. The man then was admitted to that hospital, and a CT scan and MRI revealed a large, swelling mass in his brain. The man was transferred to UPMC Shadyside in order to be closer to home. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland, and in Washington, D.C., involving the failure of hospitals to timely diagnose and treat patients with brain and other conditions. Of course, one has to obtain the medical records and retain proper experts in these cases, such as neurosurgeons and radiologists, to determine what really happened. But what is also critical in these type of cases is to obtain the hospital’s written standards to determine how the hospital expected its people to act, and to then take the depositions of the people most involved with the care and treatment of the patient, to understand what they did and whether they complied with hospital policies.

A Wisconsin court has approved an $18.2 million medical malpractice settlement from the government for a Milwaukee family whose daughter suffered severe brain damage during birth at a clinic. When the mother gave birth, her daughter was stuck in the birth canal for more than 20 minutes, and the girl suffered a major brain injury due to lack of oxygen. As a result of her birth injury, the girl will need assistance for the rest of her life, due to seizures, developmental delays and severe cerebral palsy. A copy of an article regarding the case can be found here.

Cases involving permanent injuries to kids are some of the most difficult cases that Maryland and District of Columbia medical malpractice lawyers pursue because they usually involve multiple expert witnesses, such as obstetricians, pediatric neurologists, neonatologists, placental pathologists, life care planners and economists. This makes them extremely expensive and time-consuming to pursue. Nevertheless, these cases are extremely important to file and pursue, so that compensation can be obtained for the child and the parents, in order to give the child with best medical and other care that the child can have, so as to maximize the child’s comfort and abilities. Nothing could be more important.

The family of a New York woman who died of a breast tumor in 2004 has been awarded more than $9 million in a medical malpractice case. The jury found that a surgeon failed to properly diagnose the mother of two, allowing her breast tumor to grow and kill her. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland involving a failure to timely diagnose and treat breast cancer and other cancers. Some of the cases I have handled involved a failure to properly read mammograms (negligent reading of mammograms). Other cases have involved a failure to properly read pathology such as tissue samples on slides from a biopsy.

I have even handled a case involving negligent failure to properly treat cancer, in a medical malpractice case against Kaiser. In that particular case, a woman (who happened to be a judge) was properly diagnosed with lymphoma. She eventually started chemotherapy, which lowered the ability of her immune system to fight infection. After the chemo, but while her immune system still was weakened, she developed a rash from her chemotherapy, for which her doctor negligently prescribed steroids. The problem with prescribing the steroids was that steroids tend to further reduce the immune system’s ability to fight infection and, because they act as strong anti-inflammatories, they reduce fever and make you feel better when you are sick, thereby masking infection. Unfortunately, no one ever told this to the patient, so she did not take precautions against infection (which she had been doing while on chemo). Not surprisingly, she developed an infection and never knew it. Her blood work showed it, but the doctor did not tell her about it. Sadly, one night, she became overwhelmed with meningitis and died before being able to summon help. The jury in that case awarded $2.5M to the woman’s estate and her son.

A $1.25 million settlement has been reached in an Indiana medical malpractice case in which the parents of a deceased eighteen-month-old claimed that a doctor failed to timely diagnose and treat the child’s meningitis by negligently diagnosing a stomach problem. An antibiotic treatment and brain surgery failed to cure the child, and he died. The parents alleged that the doctor should have done a spinal tap and administered antibiotics earlier. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

I have successfully handled a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases involving a failure to timely diagnosis and treat meningitis. The key to these cases is carefully looking for the signs and symptoms of meningitis (fever; headache; vomiting or nausea with headache; confusion, or difficulty concentrating — in the very young, this may appear as inability to maintain eye contact; seizures; sleepiness or difficulty waking up; stiff neck; sensitivity to light; lack of interest in drinking and eating; skin rash in some cases, such as in viral or meningococcal meningitis) both in the medical records and through speaking with family members.

A Plaintiff recently lost a medical malpractice case in which it was alleged that there was a failure to properly place a patient on anti-coagulants after orthopedic surgery, which caused blood clots to form and kill the patient (pulmonary embolism). Apparently, a 54-year-old former pastor died three weeks after undergoing surgery on his leg. He developed difficulty breathing that day and was taken to a hospital where he died. An autopsy found that his death was caused by a blood clot in his lungs that originated in his leg. The patient claimed in the suit that the doctor should have prescribed medications to reduce the chance of blood clots after the surgery to repair a torn Achilles tendon. A copy of the article regarding the case can be found here.

I have handled approximately five pulmonary embolism medical malpractice cases in the Baltimore, Maryland / Washington area, and have been highly successful in each one. The standard of care in these cases is very clear. Whenever a patient has certain risk factors, such as certain medical conditions like obesity, advanced age, surgery lasting more then two hours, etc., the surgeon must ensure that certain preventive measures are taken, such as tight stockings (commonly called Ted Stockings; to keep blood from pooling in the legs), sequential compression devices (inflatable leg sleeves that keep the blood moving in the legs), and/or a blood thinner (coumadin, lovinox, etc.).

In one of my million dollar medical malpractice verdicts in a pulmonary embolism case, a woman in her 50’s underwent a gynecological procedure and, after spending a couple of days recuperating in the hospital, went home, where she soon died of a pulmonary embolism. A review of the records revealed that she had the risk factors of relatively advanced aged and surgery of more than two hours, but had not been given a blood thinner and the nursing staff had not fully followed the doctor’s recommendation to use sequential compression devices. Our experts testified that both were violations of the standard of care. The case went to trial in Baltimore County and resulted in a million dollar-plus verdict.

In another one of my million dollar medical malpractice verdicts in a pulmonary embolism case, a man in his 70’s underwent a two hour long partial colon resection and, after spending a few days in the hospital was sent home. He came back to the hospital’s emergency room a few days later with chest pain and difficulty breathing, but the emergency room doctor (who actually was a young cardiologist moonlighting in the emergency room) failed to consider that it might be a pulmonary embolism, even though chest pain and difficulty breathing are two of classic signs of a pulmonary embolism, and sent the man home with a diagnosis of pneumonia. He came back about four days later and was admitted for a few days again for chest pain, difficulty breathing, and “lung pain,” but again no one considered pulmonary embolism. He died suddenly in the hospital of a massive pulmonary embolism, which the autopsy confirmed. Our experts testified that there was substantial medical negligence during both the emergency room visit and subsequent hospital admission, because they never ever thought about pulmonary embolism in an elderly post-surgical patient who underwent a two hour surgery, and as a result he died. The case went to trial in Baltimore City and resulted in a million dollar plus verdict.