Illinois Medical Malpractice Blog

A judge declared a mistrial in Notre Dame coach’s medical malpractice lawsuit after a juror collapsed and several doctors, including the two defendants, rushed to his aid. The plaintiff claims that the defendants in the case botched his care after he had gastric bypass surgery in June of 2002. An attorney for the plaintiff stated that it is with great reluctance that he asked for the mistrial.

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The FDA stated that all Peter Pan peanut butter bought since May 2006 should be discarded. More than 290 people from 39 states have become ill in the food poisoning outbreak and 46 have been hospitalized.

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In the face of “tort reform” and noneconomic damages caps, a jury awarded $4.1 million last Wednesday in a nursing home medical malpractice lawsuit. The jury awarded the money for pain, suffering, and other claims to the family of the victim who was found with bedsores, an undiagnosed hip fracture, and other problems. Awards of high damages are fueling a renewed effort in state legislatures to pass a bill capping damage awards. However, justice suffers when "tort reform" is pushed. The attorney for the plaintiff in this case stated that if wrongdoers cannot be punished financially, bad nursing homes and hospitals guilty of nursing home abuse and neglect and medical malpractice have little incentive to improve. He correctly stated “We don’t need tort reform. We need medical malpractice reform. We need nursing home reform.”

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Facing mounting backlash and criticism among parents, physicians, and consumer advocates, Merck & Co. said it would stop lobbying states to pass laws requiring that preteen girls be vaccinated against cervical cancer. The pharmaceutical company’s aggressive lobbying campaign was intended to boost sales of its Gardasil vaccine, which was recently approved by the FDA.

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A hospital was ordered to pay $30 million to a former Cape Coral couple whose son suffered a lifelong crippling brain injury because of the hospital’s negligence. The medical malpractice lawsuit was filed in 1999, alleging that the hospital ignored its own policies during their son’s birth. The jury found that a labor nurse ignored warning signs that the mother was experiencing strong contractions that led to a decrease in blood flow to the victim’s brain. Further, the nurse also ignored the hospital’s policies for births regarding protection of a patient while administering Pitocin.

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The Illinois Trial Lawyers Association Education Fund is hosting a seminar on March 31, 2007 at the Hilton Suites Chicago entitled “Top Ten Things Every Lawyer Should Know." Topics presented include jury consultants, experts, pre-trial litigation, and medical malpractice lawsuits. Steven M. Levin, of Levin & Perconti, will be presenting on skills and strategies in deposition-taking.

For more information, call 800-252-8501.
To register, call 217-789-0810.

A recent article examined who benefits when citizens give up their rights in tort reform and medical malpractice lawsuit damages caps. The article examined that more than 18 new companies have began writing new business in one state because the insurance industry is booming. Insurance companies are reaping excessive profits and abusing the intent of the legislature in passing tort reform.

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Both the state House and Senate recently passed versions of a bill to require the state Board of Medicine to post information online about medical malpractice lawsuits and disciplinary action against medical doctors. This bill will help ensure that patients have access to critical information about negligent doctors.

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One common form of medical malpractice is preventable drug-related injuries. At least 1.5 million occurred in 2006. Of those, 98,000 deaths occurred both because of mistakes in administering drugs and because of infections contracted in hospitals. A recent article offered a potential solution in new technologies. The technology discussed continually verifies that when the medication is drawn at the nursing station, it is checked against the patient record, confirming the time and dose. If implemented successfully in hospitals nationwide, the overwhelming number of preventable drug-related injuries could be avoided.

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Last week, a jury delivered a $1,160,000 judgment against a doctor in a medical malpractice lawsuit. The jury found that the surgeon was negligent in his treatment of the 56 year-old patient . The patient sought treatment in June 2001 for what he believed was a broken toe. His doctor found that the toe was burned and not broken and referred the patient to the offending doctor. The offending doctor saw the patient several times before he collapsed and his leg needed amputation below the knee. The personal injury attorneys for the plaintiff alleged that the 56 year-old man should have been sent to a burn doctor; rather, a conservative treatment was followed.

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County supervisors voted to pay $3.3 million to settle medical malpractice lawsuits filed by a woman who went blind and a man who had a stroke after medical malpractice mistakes were made during their care at area hospitals. The 19 year-old female victim was awarded $1.8 million for the blindness she suffered by an overlooked brain tumor. The 46 year-old man was awarded $1.5 million for the serious neurological damage sustained after a negligent delay in performing an angiogram.

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Lawmakers were recently told by former FDA employees that the federal drug approval process ignores safety concerns. One employee stated that the agency had developed a “culture of approval” for drugs. If there was a way to get the drug out on the market as soon as possible, then the employees were supposed to do just that. This recent disclosure should put close scrutiny on the process as new drugs and new uses for drugs are always being approved.

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A recent research study suggested that certain pain-relieving drugs that belong to a group of medications called COX inhibitors can hinder the body’s ability to rid itself of cholesterol. This recent finding suggests an explanation for the increased risk of heart attacks in people who used Vioxx and Bextra (both COX-2 inhibitors) and can help the pharmaceutical industry develop new arthritis pain medications.

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An Illinois jury awarded a Madison County man $450,000 on Thursday for his injuries resulting from a spinal X-ray in 2004 after the doctor, hospital, and clinic admitted botching the test. The basis for the Illinois medical malpractice lawsuit was a myleogram performed on the man. The doctor performing the test injected the wrong chemical dye into the patient’s spine for the scan and the patient suffered tremendous muscles spasms for more than two weeks. The medical malpractice led to a condition called arachnoiditis, inflammation of tissue inside the spine.

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The FDA and Baxter International Inc. (a pharmaceutical company) are warning health care providers about mix-ups of two heparin products. These mix-ups recently resulted in the death of three infants. The deaths occurred when a higher dose of Heparin Sodium Injection, at 10,000 units a milliliter, was inadvertently administered instead of a lower dose. Both products are in the same size vial and use different shades of blue as the prominent background color on their label. The similarity between the two bottles makes providers prone to medical malpractice in administering the drug.

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A jury recently awarded $21.5 million to the family of a woman. In its decision, the jury concluded that the medical malpractice victim died after receiving negligent care from an emergency room doctor.

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The Institute of Medicine states that hospitalized patients can expect to experience at least one medication error a day. Though some mistakes are harmless, others can be deadly. 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die yearly from medical malpractice in medication dosing errors. Nationwide, hospitals are taking steps to reduce medical mistakes; however, families and patients must stay vigilant in ensuring their safety in the hospital.

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An international study recently found that a widely-used drug in the prevention of excessive bleeding during heart surgery raises the risk of dying in the next five years afterward by nearly 50 percent. The researchers said that replacing the drug aprotinin sold by Bayer AG under the brand name Trasylol with other cheaper medications for a year would prevent 10,000 deaths worldwide over the next five years. Furthermore, the scientists found the same drug raised the risk of kidney failure, heart attacks, and strokes.

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The family of a woman who died eight years ago won a 28 million dollar medical malpractice lawsuit. The verdict is one of the largest personal injury jury award in the state’s history. The victim was a 34 year-old mother of three who went to a hospital three times in four days with flu-like symptoms and died of complications from streptococcus pneumonia. The family claimed in the wrongful death lawsuit that the emergency room treatment (or non-treatment) was negligent.

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