From time to time I analyze large medical malpractice verdicts to see what lessons can be learned. They usually have some common characteristics. Here is a recent one out of New York state that reinforces my belief about the elements necessary for a really large verdict.
The plaintiff was a 60 year-old man who worked full time as an electrical mechanic at a local airport on Long Island. He had been having back problems and was receiving what was intended to be a routine injection of a steroid into the epidural space around the spinal cord in his lower back. Within minutes after awakening from sedation, he experienced a massive infarction of the lower portion of his spinal cord. An infarction of the spinal cord is like a heart attack. It results from an obstruction of the blood flow to the spinal cord, which results in the death of the portion of the cord which does not receive blood. Once a portion of the spinal cord dies, it is dead and can never be restored to life or function again.
When a spinal cord infarction occurs, the patient will lose spinal cord function below the area of the infarct. That is what happened to this patient. He became paralyzed below the waist, incontinent of bowel and bladder, impotent, and had chronic pain in his legs. He could no longer work and had large medical bills. He had been the primary wage earner in his home.
The jury awarded the plaintiff and his wife a little over $60M for pain and suffering, past and future loss of earnings, past and future medical bills, and damage to the marital relationship.
All of the usual elements of a large malpractice verdict were present.
A Tragic Injury: Check. This gentleman will never walk again. Will never be able to go to the bathroom without assistance. Will never be able to make love to his wife again and will live with constant pain.
Large Medical Bills: Check. The medical bills in the immediate aftermath of this injury were large and the plaintiff will require expensive care and equipment for the rest of his life.
Large Wage Loss: Check. The plaintiff will never work again.
A Good Trial Lawyer: Check. This lawyer has had a number of large malpractice verdicts and settlements. This was not her first rodeo and she knows how to try a case successfully. Juries like her.
An X factor: Check. The plaintiff’s lawyer offered expert testimony that the epidural injection procedure could not possibly have taken place as the doctor described it in his operative note. Based on the imaging done immediately after the spinal cord infarct, the doctor must have injected a medication that should never be used near the spinal cord. According to plaintiff’s experts, the doctor had made a terrible error and then lied to cover his tracks.
Juries like doctors. Juries do not want to believe that doctors make mistakes that kill and injure people. But nothing will turn a jury against a doctor faster than a doctor caught lying to cover up a mistake. That makes juries mad and when juries get mad, they tend to respond by punishing the defendant with a big verdict. That is clearly what happened here.
This case also illustrates the importance of a talented and experienced medical malpractice lawyer. The operative note was perfectly normal and indicated that everything had gone according to plan. Sometimes things like this just happen and no one ever knows why. At least according to the operative note, this was just bad luck for the patient.
If the lawyer had not smelled a rat and gotten expert testimony to show that the operative note was a lie, the doctor might have gotten away with it. If you or a loved one suffers a serious injury during a medical procedure, let an experienced malpractice lawyer take a look at the records. There may be nothing there but, every once in a while, there is a rat hiding in the records.
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