Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

Posts Tagged ‘hospitals’

Litigation-driven surgery

Another cost of the litigation system not measured by the Tillinghast Towers Perrin study: pregnant women across the country are being required to undergo unnecessary C-sections so the doctors can avoid John-Edwards-style demagoguery in the event of pregnancy complications. C-sections now comprise 27.6% of pregnancies, and the cerebral palsy rate hasn’t declined at all.

Doctors and hospitals say they fear lawsuits if they allow a patient to attempt a vaginal birth after a C-section — called a VBAC — and something goes awry.

“We think the risk is more of a legal risk than a medical risk,” acknowledges Bob Wentz, CEO of California’s Oroville Hospital, which banned VBACs two years ago.

Thomas Frank asks what’s the matter with Kansas: it might be that a woman wanting to avoid a C-section has to travel 280 miles to find a hospital that will allow a VBAC. (Rita Rubin, “Battle lines drawn over C-sections”, USA Today, Aug. 23).

Filed under: , ,

N.J. court chills job references

Management-side lawyers are predicting a further drying up of reference-giving in response to a New Jersey appellate court’s ruling “appl[ying] the tort of negligent misrepresentation to a situation where an employer allegedly gave false information in an employment reference.” Marsha Singer said she was fired after a manager called her previous employer and was given an incorrect job title for the post she had held there; a court dismissed her claims for defamation and wrongful interference but allowed the negligent misrepresentation claim to go forward. Richard J. Reibstein of the New York office of Philadelphia’s Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen called the ruling a “dramatic shift in the law of post-employment references everywhere” and said it would influence employers outside the Garden State. (Dee McAree, “Ruling Could Lead to Restrictions on References”, National Law Journal, Aug. 5). For more on the chill on reference-giving, see Aug. 7, 2003; as it happens, New Jersey is a state that figured prominently in the widely noted case of alleged killer nurse Charles Cullen (Dec. 18, 2003; Jan. 29, Mar. 3 and Mar. 30, 2004), in which litigation-shy hospitals did not give each other frank warnings of their doubts about Cullen.

Filed under: , , , ,

Don’t take his money, St. Luke’s

Many Houston doctors are outraged that St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital is preparing to rename its medical tower, a local landmark, after controversial plaintiff’s attorney John O’Quinn (Apr. 28, 2004, etc.) in exchange for a $25 million gift. O’Quinn was the chief driver of the silicone breast implant litigation, which though decisively refuted in its major scientific contentions inflicted billions of dollars in costs on medical device providers and, not incidentally, plastic surgeons. And just this year O’Quinn’s law firm was singled out for condemnation by federal judge Janis Graham Jack in her scathing ruling on the shoddy business of mass silicosis-screening — “diagnosing for dollars”. Doctors “last week began circulating a petition against [the renaming proposal] and Monday night convened an emergency meeting of the medical executive committee….By late Monday, about 80 had signed the petition. ‘It offends us to have money we earned — and which he took by suing us — going to name after him a medical building in which we work each day,’ says the petition.” The University of Houston law school has already renamed its law library after O’Quinn, a full-length oil painting of whom looms over the students. (Todd Ackerman, “Doctors push St. Luke’s to forgo $25 million gift”, Houston Chronicle, Aug. 9). More: Kirkendall and MedPundit comment; so do GruntDoc and Michigan Medical Malpractice.

Filed under: , , , , , ,

“Doc: $2 mil. verdict proves my point”

As one might expect, spinal surgery does have a risk of spinal injury, including paralysis. Joliet neurosurgeon Thomas R. Hurley, president-elect of the shrinking Illinois State Neurosurgical Society, has an impressive safety record, performing well over 1000 spinal surgeries, with only one resulting in paralysis. Nevertheless, a Cook County jury decided that anything less than perfection was negligence, and awarded $2.3 million in damages to the family of the late factory worker Richard McCorry. McCorry was already wheelchair-bound from back pain when he had the surgery that paralyzed him. “As a result of the Tuesday verdict, Hurley’s annual medical malpractice insurance rates could jump from $245,000 a year to $300,000 or more, he said. … ‘Maybe I’ll go to another state where insurance will be $75,000.'” (Abdon M. Pallasch, Chicago Sun-Times, Jul. 28) (via ICJL). The press accounts mention the plaintiff’s attorney’s complaint that the case took ten years to try, but don’t mention that that was because the plaintiff changed his theory in 1999 and then chose to spend two and a half years trying to retroactively amend his complaint to add a new theory of liability against the deep-pocket non-profit hospital. McCorry v. Gooneratne (Ill. App. 2002); McCorry v. Evangelical Hospitals Corp. (Ill. App. 2002).

Filed under: , ,

Hospital sued for fainting dad

While his wife, Jeanette Passalaqua, was giving birth, Steven fainted in the delivery room, fracturing his skull and dying two days later. This is, says the family, the fault of Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Southern California Permanente Medical Group Inc. “‘This avoidable tragedy was a direct result of Kaiser’s ordinary negligence in failing to exercise reasonable care to prevent foreseeable injuries to Steven,’ according to the suit, which was filed last week in San Bernardino County Superior Court.” So if your maternity ward is rubber-padded next time you go there, you know why. (AP, Jul. 8).

Filed under: ,

$12.8M for bed-ridden schizophrenic’s amputation

62-year-old Kenneth F. Morris is both paraplegic and a schizophrenic. He refused to cooperate with the doctors and nurses at other hospitals, and when he arrived at Western Convalescent Hospital, he had infected bedsores, which eventually resulted in the amputation of his leg below the knee. A Los Angeles County jury held the nursing care facility 90% responsible for the injury, and awarded over $12 million in compensatory and punitive damages. “A spokeswoman for the California Department of Health Services, which inspects and licenses nursing homes, said state officials had never received a complaint about Morris’ injuries and had no plans to investigate.” (Jack Leonard, “Abuse Victim Wins Award”, Los Angeles Times, Jul. 2; plaintiffs’ law firm summary). The award will likely be lowered somewhat later in the litigation process, but the trial court is still likely to award between $3 and $6 million.

Filed under: , , ,

Another thought on the Dick Schaap lawsuit

Walter’s entry below on the Dick Schaap verdict misses a fascinating part of the case. While Schaap’s family lawyer at trial blamed three doctors for failing to diagnose lung damage from use of the medicine amiodarone (and the jury mysteriously held one doctor negligent while exonerating the other two), just two years earlier, the Schaap family and its lawyer had a different story to tell. Then, the family announced, Dick Schaap was killed because of an infection caused by the hospital’s lack of adequate hygiene standards. Unfortunately for the Schaaps, the theory didn’t stand up and the hospital was dismissed from the case, but not before ABC Primetime Live credulously reported in 2003 the supposed scandal of the hospital’s failure to prevent a “velociraptor”-like infection.

It was a case study of what can go wrong in American health care today, said the family’s lawyer, Tom Moore.

“If you ever speak to a surgeon, ‘Doc, what can I expect with my hip replacement?’ — at the top of the list is infection, post-operative infection,” he said.

(The CBS Early Show repeated the story a few days later: ask yourself if you could predict from that news coverage that the hospital would be vindicated before trial.) Without being able to tell the jury about germs that act like deadly dinosaurs, Moore invented a new theory and settled for putting Billy Crystal on the stand to wow the jury with tales of Schaap’s generosity and talent. The defense lawyer, Mark Aaronson, seems to have put his finger on the matter:

“Is everybody who dies in a hospital the victim of medical negligence?” he asked rhetorically. “So ultimately, a theory had to be concocted in front of a jury in order for a claim of damages to be made.”

(Andrew Jacobs, “Jury Deliberates Lawsuit Over Death of Dick Schaap”, NY Times, Jun. 23).

Read On…

Filed under: , , , , ,

Not about the money: a continuing series

It wasn’t about the money, which doesn’t keep the lawyer from complaining that the award was too low:

A jury found a cardiologist at Lenox Hill Hospital liable yesterday for the death of the sports journalist Dick Schaap after hip replacement surgery and awarded his family $1.95 million in compensatory damages….

His family had sought $21 million.

“This case was never about the money,” his widow, Trish, said after the verdict….

[Attorney Thomas Moore, who represents the family of the 67-year-old Schaap], also expressed some disappointment with the jury’s monetary award, saying it failed to consider Mr. Schaap’s future earnings. “He was at the zenith of his career when he died,” he said.

A lawyer for the defendant cardiologist, meanwhile, takes strenuous exception to the verdict against his client, contending it was based on erroneous science. (Andrew Jacobs, “Jury Awards Family $1.95 Million in Dick Schaap’s Death”, New York Times, Jul. 2). More: don’t miss Ted’s comments above, and welcome KevinMD readers.

Filed under: , ,

Trauma reality-TV show

The reality TV show “Trauma: Life in the ER” was filmed at 35 hospitals in 23 states over a five-year period. Now lawyers are pursuing would-be class actions against the New York Times’ television subsidiary, Discovery Communications, and various hospitals claiming that the privacy consent given by patients and family members was defective or obtained under false pretenses. Despite protests from defendants that the issue of validity of consent is intrinsically one that requires case-by-case determination, a New Jersey judge has certified a class action for lawsuits within that state. The judge estimated that the number of potential class members nationwide might reach into the hundreds of thousands. (Charles Toutant, “Hospital Patients Filmed for Reality TV Certified as Plaintiff Class”, New Jersey Law Journal, Jun. 20). Florida Masochist notes (Jun. 24) that a plaintiff’s lawyer suing in Orlando, per the Sentinel coverage, “said the lawsuit doesn’t question the right to broadcast the material, but the filming and production process”. (Pedro Ruz Gutierrez, “Patients sue over TV appearances”, Orlando Sentinel, Jun. 24). That sounds puzzling: if the persons suing aren’t objecting to the broadcast of the material, how seriously were they injured by the alleged affront to their privacy?

Filed under: , , ,

Brain wave monitor

Opinions vary among physicians as to the likely usefulness of a new device which indicates whether a patient is awake or asleep during surgery. One thing is certain, however: hospitals’ decisions on whether or not to adopt the new technology will be strongly influenced by the aim of avoiding litigation, as distinct from the device’s perceived medical merits. (Daniel Fisher, “Defensive Medicine”, Forbes, Apr. 25).

Filed under: ,