Maryland Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog
A Frederick County jury has awarded almost $1.37 million to a woman who suffers severe and chronic leg pain and must take a blood thinner each day, after a diagnostic test left her with vascular injuries. The jury found that a doctor negligently performed a laparoscopy to determine the cause of the woman’s ovarian or abdominal soreness, and that he lacerated blood vessels. The lacerations led to emergency surgery which stopped the bleeding, but the incident left her with a deep vein thrombosis, or blood clot, in her leg and the possibility of more clots. The plaintiff alleged that the doctor violated the standard of care by performing the procedure without proper visualization, using excessive force and failing to take proper precautions to avoid cutting blood vessels.
Birth Injury Malpractice
A jury has issued a $31 million verdict against an Ohio hospital in a birth injury case, which could be the largest jury award for a medical malpractice case in that state’s history. The verdict included nearly $26 million for future medical care for the boy, who is now 8.
Blood Thinner (Heparin) malpractice / Heparin Induced Thrombocytopenia Malpractice
A Texas jury has awarded a man $10 million in a medical malpractice case. The man had an allergic reaction to the blood thinner Heparin. During surgery, he suffered what’s called Heparin Induced Thrombocytopenia or H.I.T., which is a complication where the blood clots instead of thinning, stopping the blood flow to the extremities. As a result, the man lost his leg from thigh down, part of his right foot and a several fingers.
Giving A Patient The Wrong Medicine
As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I am frequently asked to comment on malpractice cases from around the county. Recently, a Chicago hospital settled a case for $3 million after it failed to properly treat a toddler for an allergic reaction to penicillin, which had been given to her for an ear infection despite previous signs of an allergy to the medication. The suit and an Illinois Appellate Court decision tied to the case suggest that efforts by the hospital’s risk manager, who is not employed there any longer, to investigate the girl’s death may have been obstructed by hospital administrators. Apparently, syringes, Intravenous tubes and other medical materials, which were physical evidence of the girl’s treatment that day , were tossed minutes after she died.
Failure to Diagnose dissecting aorta / aortic dissection
As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I am frequently asked to comment on malpractice cases from around the county. Recently, a Philadelphia jury awarded $2.185 million in a medical malpractice case in which it was alleged that a hospital and two emergency room doctors failed to timely read x-rays. The patient came to the ER at 8:35 am after experiencing chest, back and leg pains. He was quickly seen by a doctor, who ordered x-rays. After the x-rays were done, the emergency room doctor should have reviewed them before they were sent to radiology, but that did not happen. Because no one looked x-rays that day, no one realized that they showed a dissecting aortic aneurysm, a condition in which blood gets between the layers of the aorta wall and fills up the sac surrounding the heart, tightening it until the heart is not able to pump. The patient died at 7:05 pm from the undiagnosed condition.
Orthopedic Malpractice
As an experienced Baltimore, Maryland medical malpractice lawyer, I am frequently asked to comment on malpractice cases from around the county. Recently, a Rhode Island jury awarded a former truck driver $4 million in an orthopedic negligence case. The man filed suit in 2002 alleging that the doctor negligently performed surgery on his hand by slicing a nerve. This allegedly caused his hand to hurt, change color and temperature, and sweat. He eventually was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome, a chronic neurological disorder that causes severe pain. His hand since has become claw-like, and continues to have pain. As a result, he has become addicted to pain medication and relies on drugs to fall asleep each night.
Medical Malpractice – Expert Witnesses
Maryland has enacted significant limitations on the ability of Plaintiffs to use expert witnesses in Maryalnd medical malpractice cases. In 1976, the Maryland Health Claims Arbitration Act was enacted to help address a perceived medical malpractice insurance crisis. In 1986, the legislature further amended the Act to include a certificate of qualified expert requirement. As proposed in Senate Bill 559, an expert only would be qualified to sign a certificate if he or she did not receive 50 percent or more income from testimony and other activities related to personal injury claims. That language was amended to become the 20 Percent Rule; i.e., in order to qualify, a certifying expert cannot devote more than 20 percent of his or her professional activities to activities directly involving testimony in personal injury claims. The dichotomy that the General Assembly sought to reconcile was the desire, on the one hand, to exclude certain “professional witnesses” from the “pool of eligible experts” available to sign certificates of merit, while on the other, it did not want to “shrink” the size of that pool so as to “deny the parties the ability to pursue and defend these [malpractice] claims.” This balance was achieved by the aforementioned language changes which “keyed the critical numerical measurement to time, instead of income,” and narrowing the activities described as “related to” personal injury claims to the more circumscribed world of activities “directly involving testimony in personal injury claims.”
Medical Malpractice – Informed Consent Law
When most people think of a medical malpractice case, they think about the kind of case in which the plaintiff (the party bringing the case) claims that a doctor of hosptial has acted below the standard of care and caused significnat injury in a patient. Another type of medcial malpractice case, however, inolves what is called “informed consent.” In the seminal case of Sard v. Hardy, the Maryland Court of Appeals held that the doctrine of informed consent follows logically from the universally recognized rule that a physician treating a mentally competent adult under non-emergency circumstances, cannot properly undertake to perform surgery or administer other therapy without the prior consent of his patient. The fountainhead of the doctrine of informed consent is the patient’s right to exercise control of his own body. In order for the patient’s consent to be effective and “informed,” it must have been one that is given after the patient received a fair and reasonable explanation of the contemplated treatment or procedure.
Medical Malpractice – Colon Cancer in Young People
A deceased woman’s family has been awarded $2.5 million in a medical malpracice case against the woman’s doctor for misdiagnosis of cancer. According to the family, the woman’s doctor’s negligent actions resulted in delayed treatment and severely reduced her chances of survival.
Punitive Damages in Maryland Medical Malpractice Cases
Many of my Maryland medical malpractice clients ask me whether there is any possibility that they can claim or recover punitive damages in their cases. The answer in every case is no. In Maryland, in order to recover puntive damages, the Maryland Court of Appeals (Maryland’s “Supreme Court”) decided in the 1992 case of Owens-Illinois, Inc. v. Zenobia, that a person must prove that the defendant acted with “actual malice.” Actual malice has been defined to mean intent to injury, ill will, or fraud. In a medical malpractice case, I have never seen a case where a physicain intended to injure a patient, or where there was ill will toward a patient that caused injury. Similarly, I have never seen a case of fraud in a medical malpractice case that injure a patient. While I suppose it could happen, it almost never does.
Wrongful Birth Medical Malpractice Law In Maryland
As a Maryland medical malpracitce lawyer / attorney, many people ask me what is a wrongful birth case. In Maryland, a wrongful birth case is a case in which parents of a child born with birth defects allege that the negligence of prenatal health care providers deprived them of the opportunity to terminate the pregnancy due to the likelihood of the child being born in an impaired state. These type of cases are brought by parents in an effort to recover the economic expenses that will accrue in raising a child with extraordinary needs.
Lost Wages – Medical Malpractice
Many peole ask what type of damages they can get in a medical malpractice / medical negligenc cases. One type is lost wages. Maryland courts have repeatedly acknowledged the legitimacy of lost wage claims in negligence cases. For instance, in Adams v. Benson, 208 Md. 261, 270-271, 117 A.2d 881, 885 (1955), the Court of Appeals recognized: “That in an action for personal injuries caused by the negligence of the defendant, the plaintiff may recover not only for the consequences which have actually and naturally resulted from the tort, but also for those which may certainly or reasonably and probably result therefrom as proximate consequences, but not for consequences which are speculative or conjectural.” The Court then recognized that in a personal injury action, a plaintiff may claim: “damages for (1) resulting loss of time and loss of earnings; (2) loss or diminution of earning capacity sustained by being temporarily deprived of her capacity to perform her ordinary labor, and (3) loss of future earnings, if shown with reasonable certainty and not merely speculative in character”. Id., 208 Md. at 271, 117 A.2d at 885.
Fetal Monitoring Strips – Medical Malpractice
A South Carolina jury has awarded $4.4 million to the parents of a 4-year-old girl who died after suffering brain injury at birth at a hospital there. The jury found that the hospital was at fault in 2003 when it assigned a nurse trainee to monitor the mother, who had come to the hospital three days before her scheduled induction, complaining of nausea and vomiting. Lawyers for the family argued the nurse trainee misread fetal heart monitoring information showing the baby was in severe distress and needed emergency intervention. The infant subsequently was born with a severe brain injury caused by oxygen deprivation, and died of complications from cerebral palsy more than four years later. While the child was alive, the family endured constant challenges, including giving medication to battle seizures, taking her to therapy several times a week and relying on a feeding tube to keep her nourished.
Septic Shock – Medical Malpractice
A Texas man who lost both of his arms and legs to a hospital acquired infection infection, called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus also known as MRSA, has been awarded $17.5 million by a Texas jury. After medical malpractice caps are applied, the plaintiff could collect up to $7.5 million from the doctor, an infectious-disease specialist who treated the infection in 2003. The doctor had treated the plaintiff six years ago when he developed an infection following ulcer surgery at a hospital in Texas. The doctor administered eight antibiotics to Fitzgerald but not the one drug that would have treated MRSA. The hospital-acquired infection is resistant to several common antibiotics and can become deadly if it spreads and is not treated quickly.
Hospital Acquired Infections – Medical Malpractice
Every year in the United States, approximately 5% of patients admitted to hospitals develop hospital acquired infections (Staph, MRSA, etc.). A hospital acquired infection is one that is caused by just being in the hospital. Such infections double the rate of mortality for admitted patients, and it a leading cause of death in this country.