|
News - Verdicts/Successes
Announcements | Verdicts/Successes
Mark T. Perry successfully defended a physician in a medical malpractice trial case that was tried in Lackawanna County
Mark T. Perry successfully defended a physician in a medical malpractice trial case that was tried in Lackawanna County. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of the decedent. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendant, who was the decedent’s family physician, failed to manage the decedent’s care and treatment. Specifically, plaintiffs claimed that over the course of twenty years, the family physician failed to properly monitor and treat the decedent’s diabetes and hypertriglyceridemia causing her to develop acute pacreatitis, which led to her death at the age of 29. The decedent had a complicated medical history, including a history of obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, type II diabetes, mellitus, prior acute pancreatitis which required hospitalization, and a splenectomy as a result of trauma. The physician began treating the decedent when she was seven-years-old. The decedent was never able to achieve control over her diabetes or weight during the course of her treatment with her family physician.
During the two week trial, the plaintiff presented expert testimony to the jury to establish that the defendant family physician deviated from the standard of care. In response, the defense called the family physician to testify as an expert on his own behalf on the standard of care applicable to him. In addition, a board certified internal medicine specialist testified on behalf of the defendant physician’s regarding the standard of care, and a board certified nephrologist was called by the defense to testify on the issue of causation.
The nephrologist expert testified that based on the decedent’s blood cultures and chest x-rays, the decedent’s acute illness and death was not caused by an infection. Therefore, the family physician was not negligent in failing to prescribe antibiotics because the blood cultures established that there was no infection in the blood. The internal medicine expert testified that the defendant’s family physician met the standard of care in treating the decedent’s triglyceride levels. Based on the standard of care in the mid-1990’s, the expert testified that it was within the standard for the defendant physician to try to keep the decedent’s triglyceride levels under 1,000 to prevent her from having a recurring attack of pacreatitis. He testified that the decedent’s triglyceride levels reflected her failure to control diabetes through diet and exercise, and not the physician’s failure to prescribe sufficient doses of Lopid, which is a treatment prescribed to lower triglyceride levels. The expert testified that in the mid-1990’s in the absence of pancreatitis, you should not just initiate treatment with Lopid unless the triglyceride levels are in excess of 2,000. If an individual has pancreatitis, the goal is to lower the triglyceride levels to under 1,000.
At the end of the two-week trial, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the family physician finding him not negligent in his treatment of the decedent. Plaintiffs’ counsel filed post-trial motions requesting a new trial. Specifically, plaintiffs claimed that the defense improperly used the Physicians Desk Reference and a medical text during re-cross examination, and the court failed to exclude the evidence as inadmissible hearsay. Both parties filed briefs. The defense argued that the PDR was properly used in support of a two schools-of-thought defense. Further, it was argued that on a number of occasions, plaintiffs’ counsel challenged the defendant physician’s ability to cite medical literature in support of his opinions. Consequently, the court determined that plaintiff’s counsel opened the door, and it was proper re-cross examination for the defense counsel to rebut plaintiffs’ counsel’s unfair inference that the physician was unable to cite any medical authority in support of his opinions. Oral argument was held, supplemental briefs were filed and ultimately the Court found in favor of the defendants. After the deadline had past for plaintiffs to file an appeal, judgment was entered in favor of the defendants and against the plaintiffs on the verdict of the jury.
|
