Personal injury firm win clinical negligence lawsuit
A Chicago based
personal injury law firm has successfully settled a medical malpractice case, to which the claimant was awarded $3.45million compensation.
The case involved the failure to timely treat a patient who went to a Hospital’s emergency room with severe leg pain and waited for four hours to be seen by a physician. The patient went on to later have a through-the knee amputation of her leg.
In 2003, Marlene Bruhmuller, 61, complained of severe pains in her left leg, two years prior, she had undergone a femoral-popliteal bypass on the same leg for vascular insufficiency, to which her surgeon had told her she needed to go to the emergency room immediately, if she ever developed severe pain.
One day, she began to feel pain, so Marlene arrived at the Emergency Department, but the nurse filed her under ‘urgent’ rather than ‘emergent’, thus she waited four hours to be seen.
Once seen, she was diagnosed with a blockage of her bypass and taken directly to surgery. The surgeon however failed to restore the blood flow adequately. As a result of the delays and mistakes, Marlene had to have an amputation.
Her personal injury lawyer commented: “Mrs. Bruhmuller did exactly what she had been instructed to do when she went to the Emergency Department with her leg pain. This is a time-sensitive problem and there is every reason to believe she would have been fine with proper and timely care.”
The hospital paid $2.5million of the settlement, whilst the surgeon paid $950.000.
Updated on 30/01/2009