A Michigan jury awarded the family of an 81-year-old woman $21 million in a lawsuit against Oakwood Hospital. The family claimed the hospital mistakenly operated on her brain in January 2012 when she was supposed to have a simple jaw alignment. She was already in precarious health and recovering from a heart attack she had suffered in October. The woman never recovered from the surgery and died 60 days later after being on life support.
According to the lawsuit, after mixing up her CT scan results with those of another patient, hospital staff thought the woman had bleeding in her brain and needed immediate surgery. She was wheeled into the operating room where five holes were drilled into her head and the right side of her skull was sawed out and replaced. “They poked around in her brain, couldn’t find anything and closed her up,” said the Geoffrey Fieger, the family’s attorney.
A safety officer said the mix-up wasn’t the result of a failure on Oakwood’s part to develop and follow proper procedures. The family only became suspicious when they noticed the woman’s x-rays were different than when she was admitted to the hospital. According to Fieger, the woman’s family was not told about the mistake, nor was the state of Michigan. He also claims Oakwood falsified medical records and never admitted their mistake until trial, two years later. Despite admitting they operated on the wrong patient, Oakwood said they had done no harm to her. Fieger also stated that during closing arguments, Oakwood’s attorney asked the jury to send the plaintiffs back to India as their verdict; the woman and her family had recently immigrated to the U.S. An appeal is planned.
The appeal will delay payment and justice (perhaps deny it) for this terribly wronged family. The hospital seems to have taken the attitude that an 81-year-old life is not worth much. The jury, obviously, disagreed. Michigan tort reform may reduce the verdict; the court of appeals and/or the very conservative Michigan Supreme Court may reverse. Such is the fate of victims and their justice-seeking attorneys in today’s litigation climate.
Tort reform creates the atmosphere in which hospital representatives can speak so callously about their outrageous conduct. There is a “blame the victim” and, especially a “blame the victim’s lawyer” mentality in all cases, especially in Medical/Hospital Malpractice cases, these days. Should patients be required to mark the spots of their prospective surgeries with a highlighter to avoid unnecessary surgery or surgery on the wrong patient or the wrong body part? How can a hospital spokesperson say that the hospital had “done no harm” when performing brain surgery on the wrong patient? What would the result have been if a hospital spokesperson would have admitted fault, immediately, and offered reasonable compensation? The family would have been thankful for their honesty and compassion and would have accepted an offer for far less than this verdict. Verdicts that seem “outrageous” to the general public are, almost always, the result of outrageous behavior by the defendant. That was certainly true here. This jury got it exactly right. If our legislators would stop accepting campaign contributions from those who would ask them for “tort reform” in return, perhaps our citizens would avoid these drastic results in the operating room and safety-conscience defendants would strive to limit mistakes rather than litigation results.
To the “tort reform hypocrites who staunchly defend the Second Amendment (while our citizens are killed, en masse, with guns) while ignoring the Seventh Amendment: While there is room for debate as to what exactly the Second Amendment calls for, there can be no debate about the Seventh. The Constitution doesn’t discriminate, why should you? Hopefully, this family will get every dime of this verdict, this hospital will pay dearly and learn a valuable lesson, and the cause of justice will prevail, once again, in Michigan courtrooms.
Mark Bello is the CEO and General Counsel of Lawsuit Financial Corporation, a pro-justice lawsuit funding company.
