Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

The emergency room is supposed to provide lifesaving care, quickly, to those who need it the most. No one wants to wait around in the emergency room, especially when their life is in danger. Nonetheless, sometimes emergency rooms simply cannot operate as quickly as they should. In a lawsuit against Savoy Medical Center in Mamou, Mitch Benson challenged delays in critical care in emergency rooms answering the question: can you sue an emergency room for acting too slowly?

Mr. Benson was doing yardwork with his neighbor on October 21, 2017 when he began to suffer from chest pain. In response to his pain, Mr. Benson was then taken to the ER at Savoy Medical Center in Mamou. After arriving at 4:05pm, Mr. Benson was examined by Dr. Clifford Godfrey who confirmed that Mr. Benson had suffered a heart attack and as a result his right coronary artery was 100% blocked. At 5pm, Dr. Godfrey consulted the hospital’s interventional cardiologist, Dr. Charles Monier, who instructed Dr. Godfrey to go ahead and implement a thrombolytic agent that could possibly dissolve the clot. Dr. Monier was not an employee of Savoy Medical Center, but he was the director of Savoy’s catheterization laboratory. Dr. Monier also informed Dr. Godfrey that he would know within 20-25 minutes if the thrombolytic therapy was successful, however, if the therapy was not successful Dr. Godfrey would have to transfer Mr. Benson to a different hospital that had a cath lab open because Savoy’s was closed on the day of Mr. Benson’s procedure. Unfortunately, the thrombolytic therapy failed and at 7:02pm Savoy called Arcadian Ambulance to take Mr. Benson to the Heart Hospital of Louisiana where a cath procedure was successfully completed at 10:31pm that evening. Thankfully, Mr. Benson survived the heart attack. 

Following this incident, Mr. Benson filed suit against Savoy, Dr. Godfrey (as an employee of Savoy), and Dr. Monier. Once litigation began, Dr. Godfrey was shown to not have been employed by Savoy at the time. Moreover, Mr. Benson settled his claim against Savoy for less than $100,000 dismissing Savoy from the litigation. However, under the Louisiana Medical Malpractice Act Mr. Benson has the right to proceed litigation against the Louisiana Patient’s Fund Oversight Board (PCF) for damages. In this litigation, Mr. Benson asserted a claim against PCF damages in excess of $100,000 caused by Savoy’s negligence. 

The birth of a child is something many soon-to-be parents look forward to with both excitement and nervousness. Concern for the health and safety of both mother and child are common, and often, unnecessary. Sadly, this is not always true. In the case of one Terrebonne Parish family, the arrival of a baby girl was accompanied by an unfortunate medical mistake. The family’s medical malpractice claim raised important distinctions in assessing and apportioning damages as it moved into the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal.

Following a high-risk pregnancy, Kimberly Thibodeaux gave birth to her daughter, Gabrielle, on November 20th, 2003. Dr. James Donnell performed the cesarean section that delivered Mrs. Thibodeaux’s fourth child. Complications arose from the c-section, including a severe laceration to Mrs. Thibodeaux’s bladder. Ultimately, Dr. Donnell performed an emergency hysterectomy and placed sutures into Mrs. Thibodeaux’s bladder without consulting a urologist before attempting to repair Mrs. Thibodeaux’s bladder himself. Mrs. Thibodeaux experienced extreme abdominal pain and discomfort following the delivery, eventually necessitating further treatment under the care of urologist Dr. Robert Alexander. Mrs. Thibodeaux’s abdomen was reopened, the sutures removed, stents and a catheter were placed into her bladder in an attempt to regain any functional use. Mrs. Thibodeaux continued her treatment with Dr. Alexander, who determined the damage to Mrs. Thibodeaux’s bladder was permanent in April 2007. Mrs. Thibodeaux continued to suffer from a range of painful symptoms, including frequent urination, leakage, pain during sex and urination, and abdominal spasms.

Mrs. Thibodeaux, along with her husband Todd and on behalf of their daughter, filed a medical malpractice suit against Dr. Donnell. In May 2014, the jury trial returned a verdict in the Thibodeauxs’ favor, finding that Dr. Donnell had breached the applicable standard of care in treating Mrs. Thibodeaux, and that his breach caused her injuries. The jury awarded $60,000 for Mrs. Thibodeaux’s medical expenses but did not award any general damages. Both the Thibodeauxs and Dr. Donnell filed motions challenging the damages award. The trial court denied both motions, and the Thibodeauxs filed an appeal in the First Circuit. After determining both motions were filed in an appropriate manner within the stated deadline, the court concluded the Thibodeauxs had cleared a path for their appeal concerning damages. See La. R.S. 13.850(A).

When someone decides to have surgery, they do not typically anticipate a lawsuit arising out of that surgery. Typically, a headache is not a common side effect of getting a new joint implanted into a toe, but when issues of joinder and diversity jurisdiction complicate a lawsuit, a headache is what the patient gets. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened to a patient in eastern Louisiana. Kale Flagg had an unsuccessful toe-joint replacement surgery and filed a lawsuit in state court asserting medical malpractice claims against Dr. Denise Elliot and a product defect claim against both Stryker Corp. and Memometal Inc. USA.

When no plaintiff is a citizen from any state which a defendant is a citizen, jurisdiction issues may arise. If that condition is met, a lawsuit filed in state court may be removed to federal court. See 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1). As out-of-state defendants, Stryker and Memometal removed the case to federal court. However, Mr. Flagg and Dr. Elliot are both citizens of Louisiana. Here, the District Court held that Mr. Flagg failed to exhaust all of his administrative remedies against Dr. Elliot, and therefore, naming Dr. Elliot as a defendant in the case was improper. Once Dr. Elliot was dismissed from the case by the District Court, diversity jurisdiction existed and the case could be heard in federal court.

Mr. Flagg appealed the judgment of the District Court dismissing the doctor from the case. The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s decision. In determining that the doctor was improperly joined to the case, the court looked at whether Mr. Flagg would be able to recover against the doctor in state court.

Every medical professional has a standard of care he or she must adhere to. No one wants to deal with the failure to meet this standard of care, but oftentimes, life puts us in unfortunate situations. When we suffer injuries—or worse—at the hands of those who are supposed to treat, heal, or diagnose us, medical malpractice can help provide compensation. In a recent case appealed to the Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit of Louisiana, a medical malpractice claim was made against the Louisiana State University Health Systems Moss Regional Medical Center (“Moss Regional”).

On July 13, 2009, Geranda Matthews went to Moss Regional where she underwent tests that revealed a mass in the right upper lobe of her right lung. Physicians Dr. Arnold Kent Seale and Dr. Ping Kok Lie ordered a biopsy to see if the mass was cancerous. The biopsy was performed on July 15, 2009, but there insufficient tissue for a diagnosis, so a second biopsy was performed that October. Like the first biopsy, it did not have enough tissue for the pathologist and so Mrs. Matthews was not diagnosed or treated for cancer at Moss Regional. Unfortunately, in April of 2009, Mrs. Matthews was admitted to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital as the mass in her lung was cancerous, had spread, and was causing pain and paraplegia. Though she was treated for cancer, Mrs. Matthews passed away.

Her husband, William Matthews, filed a medical malpractice claim against Rapides Regional, claiming that the doctors failed to diagnose her cancer, therefore decreasing her chance of receiving successful treatment. Mr. Matthews filed a motion for summary judgement—a motion for judgment as a matter of law rather than on the facts—claiming it was appropriate because the damages Mrs. Matthews suffered were greater than the $500,000.00 cap for medical malpractice. La. C.C.P. art. 966(B)(2).