Jury awards $759,000 in malpractice case / LJWorld.com

Archive for Friday, November 3, 2006

Doctor removed wrong ovary

J-W Staff Reports

November 3, 2006

A Douglas County jury on Friday awarded $759,000 to a woman who had the wrong ovary removed by a Lawrence doctor.

Amy C. Miller, 32, had sought more than $750,000 in damages in her lawsuit against Lawrence physician Carolyn Johnson, who specializes in obstetrics and gynecology.

It's not disputed that Johnson accidentally removed Miller's left ovary instead of the right one on Oct. 18, 2002, when Miller came in for surgery to relieve severe pain on the right side of her pelvis.

At the time of the surgery, Johnson worked at Lawrence OB-GYN Specialists. She now works for Student Health Services at Kansas University's Watkins Memorial Health Center.

Discussion

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3 November 2006
at 6:45 p.m.

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gphawk89 (Anonymous) says…

Did they actually award $759K to the woman? Or was the judgement for $759K? There's a big difference after the lawyer takes his cut.
3 November 2006
at 8:19 p.m.

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not_dolph (Anonymous) says…

Look on the brightside…now the doctor is “helping” students at KU…
3 November 2006
at 8:49 p.m.

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srj (Anonymous) says…

I would consider going from Lawrence OB-GYN Specialists to KU Clinic a demotion.

Why even go to court on this? The insurence company thought they where going to get off cheaper?
3 November 2006
at 8:55 p.m.

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Teapot9 (Anonymous) says…

Who were the attorneys for the patient?
3 November 2006
at 10:08 p.m.

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OldEnuf2BYurDad (Anonymous) says…

I think this is excessive. Everytime a cop or a doctor messes up, we jump for joy when a jury goes crazy and awards some huge dollar amount. I wonder how many people this doctor “saved” before this honest mistake was made? Does that count for anything?
6 November 2006
at 10:43 a.m.

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lristh1230 (Anonymous) says…

i agree this amount was outrageous!!!!!!!!!I hope that is overturned
10 November 2006
at 4:06 a.m.

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tashtego (Anonymous) says…

I am a lawyer in a different jurisdiction that is also very conservative in medical malpractice cases. These cases are very difficult and expensive to handle when the doctor contests liability—i.e claims that he or she was within the standard of care.

While I do not know the details of how this case was handled, I am reasonably certain that the doctor probably admitted that she made a mistake and the question became how much money the patient deserved for her damages. The doctor's insurance company likely made an offer of settlement that was unacceptable to the client. It is possible that the doctor only had limited insurance as well. If she only had for example, 200K in insurance, or if the caps on her liability in fact prevent the patient from recovering over a certain amount, as seems likely, then the insurance company figures that the worst that can happen is the patient gets whatever the cap is—probably 250K.

This is why legislative “one size fits all” caps are bad ideas. They discourage settlements and the patient or the injured party does not recover what he or she deserves. For example, I had a client here who had a catastrophic result from botched surgery—a permanent colostomy at age 35. The surgeon, the chief of surgery in a small town, had only 200K in insurance and there was no other plausible defendant (such as the hospital).

The question becomes, do you go to trial and try to get more from a jury? My case was one where the doctor did not admit to being negligent, whereas this one was clearly a case of negligence.

There is also the possibility that the patient had a case against the hospital and the hospital settled. (Ordinarily when there is surgery on the wrong part of the body, there is a screw-up by the hospital as well as by the doctor.)

In any case, the questions to be answered by the jury would be how much the patient had been damaged. She is 32, not 62. The wrong ovary was removed. It reminds me of the joke where the doctor comes in and says “I've got good news and bad news; which do you want to hear first?” The patient wants the bad news first. Doctor says: ” We cut off the wrong leg”. Patient is shocked, finally asks for the good news. Doc replies: “The other leg is getting better.”

So this is a serious case if the patient is in fact going to have to have both ovaries removed when only one was a problem.

It's not at all an “outrageous” verdict. What's outrageous is that legislatures enact these caps on recoveries and that partly as a result, the doctors do not carry enough insurance!

Lawyers are often criticized for their greediness. The real culprits are the insurance companies who drag these things out when they should pay up.

10 November 2006
at 4:20 a.m.

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tashtego (Anonymous) says…

As a follow-up, I wanted to ask how many of you who care about this kind of thing—lawsuits and the legal system—know the real facts about the notorious McDonald's “spilled coffee” case? In that New Mexico case, an elderly woman at the McDonald's drive through spilled hot coffee on her inner thighs after placing the coffee cup between her legs.

McDonald''s was found liable and the jury awarded a huge amount of damages, including punitive damages for McDonald's carelessness. In most states, punitive damages can be awarded if the jury finds that the defendant acted recklessly or with knowledge that its conduct would be likely to cause significant harm.

Here are the facts that most people do not know. First, the woman suffered third degree burns on her legs, requiring skin grafts and significant medical expenses of treating the burns. Second, McDonald's had had many, many incidents where customers were burned severely by their hot coffee. Third, McDonald's coffee was like 30 degrees hotter than that of their competitors. Fourth, McDonald's had no explanation of why their coffee should be hotter than that of others.

The jury found that the woman was partially at fault and the monetary award was reduced by her proportion of negligence, in what we call a “comparative fault” system.
And the judge reduced the jury's punitive damages significantly.

Finally, the woman's lawyer had offered to accept $25,000 before trial. McDonald's offered nothing. Then, when they lost, McDonald's and their lawyers started whining about the system that they so clearly abused.

It would be interesting to know how much McDonald's spent defending the case; defense lawyers get paid by the hour.