Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog

A federal judge in a federal tort claims act case involving medical malpractice has ordered the U.S. government to pay $8.6 million in damages due to an air force base doctor's misdiagnosis of flesh-eating bacteria. In 2002, the woman went to the base emergency room for pain and swelling in her right arm. Court documents say that the doctor believed the woman was an addict looking for prescription drugs and told her to go home and take Motrin. Weeks later, the woman was diagnosed with necrotizing fasciitis or flesh-eating bacteria. A bench trial was held in August. In a decision late last month, the judge faulted the doctor and wrote that the woman suffers continuous, debilitating pain. A copy of an 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 infections. Cases against the U.S. government are always more difficult because they must be brought under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which means that they get tried before a judge and not a jury.

The medical malpractice lawyers at Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White, LLC handle medical malpractice cases throughout the mid-Atlantic region. As a service to our colleagues who are considering filing a plaintiff's action in North Carolina, we are publishing the following on key areas of the law:

A. Statute of Limitations:
Medical malpractice suits must be brought within three years from the date of the last act of the defendant giving rise to the cause of action or within one year of the date when the injury was or should have been discovered, but not more than four years from the date of the last act of defendant giving rise to the cause of action. N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 1-15 and 1-52(16) (1996). Foreign object cases must be brought within one year from the date of discovery, but no longer than ten years from the date of the occurrence. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-15 (1996). Wrongful death actions based on alleged medical malpractice must be brought within the foregoing period or within two years from death, whichever is shorter. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 1-53 (1996).

B. Contributory Negligence:
In North Carolina, a claimant's contributory negligence bars recovery completely. Miller v. Miller, 273 N.C. 228, 160 S.E.2d 65 (1968). Although a medical malpractice claimant cannot be found contributorily negligent for the behavior that caused him to require treatment, the trier of fact may find that his acts or omissions during or after treatment bar recovery. Cobo v. Raba, 125 N.C. App. 320, 481 S.E.2d 101 (1997). A patient's unreasonable failure to follow the defendant's medical advice can be contributory negligence sufficient to bar recovery. Radford v. Norris, 63 N.C. App. 501, 305 S.E.2d 64 (1983).

C. Vicarious Liability:
The reported North Carolina decisions do not appear to have used the doctrine of apparent or ostensible agency to impose liability on hospitals for the negligent acts of their non-employee physicians. In the most relevant case, Hoffman v. Moore Regional Hospital, 114 N.C. App. 248, 441 S.E.2d 567, cert. denied, 336 N.C. 605, 447 S.E.2d 391 (1994), the court recognized the existence of the theory, but declined to use it to hold a hospital liable for the error of a radiologist. It held that there was no detrimental reliance, a necessary element of apparent agency, because there was no evidence plaintiff would have gone to another hospital had she known that the radiologist was an independent contractor.

Continue reading " Attorney's Summary of Relevant North Carolina Law for Medical Malpractice Case " »

Los Angeles County has finally acknowledged for the first time in a medical malpractice case that a woman who died shortly after writhing in pain for nearly an hour on the waiting room floor of a county hospital been saved if she had been properly treated. The woman was captured on security videotape as a janitor mopped around her and a triage nurse dismissed her complaints early one morning in May 2007. The woman’s death helped precipitate the closure of the hospital's emergency room and inpatient care after federal regulators determined that staffers had failed to deliver a minimum standard of care.

The woman’s boyfriend, who had accompanied her to the emergency room and called 911 from a nearby pay phone after no one would help, recently was offered a $250,000 settlement by county supervisors. A separate lawsuit against the county filed by her adult children could potentially prove far more costly and is considered more likely to go to trial. The children have asked for $1 million for each minute she was denied treatment -- $45 million in all.

The indifference shown to the woman’s suffering made national news and outraged county supervisors and national health authorities as well as area residents. A federal report issued last year concluded that six staff members, including a nurse and two nursing assistants, saw or walked past the woman but did nothing. She died from a perforated bowel shortly after she was arrested on an outstanding warrant instead of being treated.

The potential county payouts in the case would mark the latest in a long history of settlements and judgments against the now-shuttered hospital for poor patient care. A copy of an article regarding the case can be found here.

I have been involved in a number of medical malpractice / medical negligence / medical error cases in Baltimore and other counties in Maryland involving care that was so below the standard of care that the state medical board or nursing board investigated and filed charges. In one case, a nurse was even prosecuted criminally for failing to render proper medical care, causing the death of the woman. It’s always helpful when the state gets involved to investigate. Many times, the state’s report can be a helpful tool to prove what happened before the lawsuit is ever filed.

There is a log of buzz in Maryland about medical malpractice cases against hospitals due to hospital infections, after an article in Maryland’s legal newspaper, The Daily Record, published an article that such lawsuits are on the rise. According to the article:

* On Nov. 6, a jury awarded $13.5 million in a medical malpractice case to the family of a Massachusetts woman who died of an infection caused by flesh-eating bacteria that she contracted during cancer treatment.

* On Nov. 14, a Utah woman reached a confidential settlement in a $16 million medical malpractice suit she filed, alleging that a hospital failed to detect necrotizing fasciitis, a flesh-eating bacteria, before and after she gave birth, causing her to lose three limbs and several organs.

* In July, a Missouri couple was awarded $2.58 million in a medical malpractice case after the husband contracted a potentially deadly type of staph infection, known as Methicillin-Resistant Staph Aureus (MRSA), when doctors inserted a pacemaker. As a result of the infection, the patient lost a kidney, and a leg and a foot had to be amputated.

The article also states that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta estimates that more than 2 million hospital-acquired infections occur annually, resulting in 90,000 deaths. In long-term care facilities, the CDC estimates an additional 1.5 million health-care associated infections occur each year. A copy of an article regarding the case can be found here.

Interestingly, the article did not interview any plaintiffs’ attorneys; only defense attorneys. Had they done so, they would have learned that attorneys have been suing hospitals for years for the failure to timely diagnose and treat infections. I have successfully handled a number of such cases over the years and they are always tragic and frequently involve serious injury or even death. They usually involve routine procedures, like orthopedic surgery or gallbladder surgery, which goes well, except for the fact that the patient develops a severe infection which is not timely diagnosed or treated.

A Los Angeles County woman may receive more than $1.6 million to settle a malpractice lawsuit she brought against the county after being paralyzed during back surgery at a Los Angeles medical center. The L.A. county Claims Board is prepared to discuss the proposed medical malpractice settlement with legal counsel behind closed doors. If they give their go-ahead, the matter will then go before the county Board of Supervisors for final approval.

The lawsuit was brought by a woman who had two vertebrae fractured in a car accident in 2005. During surgery at the hospital, the woman, who was 20 years old at the time, was paralyzed. In her lawsuit, the woman claimed that no one explained the risks of the procedure to her and that the hospital's staff failed to provide her with the necessary care. Although the medical center took the position that she received proper care, the settlement was proposed to avoid a potentially risky jury trial.

Under the terms of the proposed settlement, the county would pay $1.5 million to the woman and assume medical bills totaling $112,999. The county has already paid more than $217,000 in attorney fees in the case. A copy of an 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 properly perform surgery. In one such medical malpractice case I am handling now in the District of Columbia, a woman was paralyzed during spinal cord stimulator replacement surgery. Other cases that I have handled involved injuries to arteries during surgery and nerve compression injuries, which have caused paralysis and even quadriplegia.

Interestingly, in the Los Angeles case cited above, the county has to approve all settlements with county hospitals. In Maryland, state hospitals such as the University of Maryland Medical Center are able to settle medical malpractice cases on their own.