A Harford County, Maryland jury has awarded a 53-year-old woman $3.5 million in a medical malpractice case against two surgeons Dr. Roger E. Schneider, chairman of Upper Chesapeake Health System, and his partner, Dr. Mark D. Gonze, and their business, Vascular Surgery Associates. The woman underwent surgery for blocked arteries in 2007, with a terrible outcome. The woman claimed that the doctors used an improper grafting technique, which led to blood loss and damage to the woman’s spinal cord, which left the woman paraplegic, in constant pain and unable to walk. The award consisted of $1.3 million for noneconomic damages (pain, suffering, etc.), $2 million for future medical bills, and more than $200,000 for her past bills.
This verdict is interesting because it occurred in Harford County. That county is well-known by plaintiffs’ lawyers, defense lawyers and insurance companies to be a very conservative venue for trying cases. Whenever I go to a court ordered settlement conference for a medical mapractice case that I am handing in that county, the chief judge always reminds me that we are in Harford County and he claims that there hasn’t been a malpractice verdict in favor of a plaintiff for years. It seems he will have to admit that the tide has turned. The reality is that a good case is a good case regardless of where it is to be tried, as the case above indicates.
As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I have handled a number of medical malpractice cases in Harford County and elsewhere involving vascular surgery and paralysis. They are extremely complicated and require expertise that most general personal injury attorneys do not have.
We handle cases like these all of the time in my practice.
Contact Andrew G. Slutkin with further questions or inquiries at 410-385-2786