photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured on Sept. 4, 2024.

Updated at 12:15 p.m. Monday, June 15, 2026

Potential jurors in a medical malpractice lawsuit were dismissed Monday morning after the parties reached a last-minute confidential settlement in a case that involved a surgeon’s removal of the wrong organ.

The case concerns Jeannine Williams-Davidson, who went to Stormont-Vail Hospital in Topeka to have an adrenal gland removed, but Dr. Nason Lui removed part of her pancreas instead.

Because the terms of the settlement are confidential, Williams-Davidson and her attorney, Shawn Lee, declined to say whether they were pleased with the specific outcome.

Lee did note that the case was “very extensively litigated” and “complex.” He said it also involved new issues of law.

Williams-Davidson, in an email to the Journal-World, said: “We are happy the Kansas Courts helped bring this chapter of our lives to a close. We would like to thank our Attorney Shawn Lee and the Kansas Courts for all their hard work.”

As the Journal-World reported, the suit had come back to Douglas County District Court after a series of appeals in the plaintiff’s favor.

Two years after the surgery, Williams-Davidson and her husband sued Lui and Stormont-Vail for malpractice. The couple did not offer expert testimony on the medical malpractice claim, which is generally required in Kansas — because of the complexity of medical issues — unless a “common knowledge exception” applies.

The couple believed that a common-knowledge exception applied in the case of the removal of the wrong organ.

As noted in the court file, the exception applies when the “diagnosis, treatment, and care of a patient is so obviously lacking in reasonable care and the results are so bad that the lack of reasonable care would be apparent to and within the common knowledge and experience” of an average person.

A Douglas County District Court judge, James McCabria, disagreed, however, and issued an order of summary judgment for the surgeon and hospital. Summary judgment is when a court decides that no genuinely disputed facts exist and that the case can be determined as a matter of law.

On appeal, a panel of judges held that McCabria was wrong and that the common-knowledge exception did apply and that Williams-Davidson did not need expert testimony.

“When a surgeon misidentifies and removes a healthy organ, leaving the organ intended to be operated on untouched, the outcome is so patently bad that the lack of reasonable care can be apparent and within the common knowledge of a layperson to establish a breach of the standard of care,” a majority of the court wrote in its July 2023 decision, reversing McCabria.

When the defendants took the matter to the Supreme Court of Kansas, arguing that the appeals court was mistaken, the justices on the high court split down the middle, 3-3, with the seventh justice having recused himself. When the court “ties” in such a manner, the result is that the appeals court decision is upheld.