Preston Jay Douglas

Mr. Douglas handled a medical malpractice lawsuit regarding the wrongful death of my wife. The lawsuit was against the estate of a neurosurgeon who operated on my wife for berry aneurysms at a major NYC hospital. During the 2.5 years that Mr. Douglas handled the case, he did not read the patient file... to obtain all the critical documents, he did not depose a single witness, he provided the expert witness that I paid for with incomplete medical records and he did not know that the statute of limitations could be tolled in a medical malpractice lawsuit when the evidence clearly indicates that is the only appropriate legal argument that should be made. At a NYC hospital, my wife was diagnosed with a large berry aneurysm on her right internal carotid artery. She was referred to a neurosurgeon at another NYC hospital. The surgeon had an angiogram performed of only the right internal carotid artery as he was looking for additional aneurysms. The test showed a second smaller aneurysm on the artery. The surgeon, however, told my wife and her family that the test confirmed the original diagnosis of a single aneurysm and that she could be cured by surgically clipping it. The surgeon and 2 of his associates then performed an operation that promoted the growth of the concealed aneurysm. That aneurysm subsequently grew to giant size and ruptured and caused the death of my wife 8.5 years later. When my wife lapsed into a coma I called the surgeon. It turns out that he had just died 5 days earlier from cancer. Instead of him showing up at the hospital where my wife was on life support, his secretary sent a copy of his office records. When my wife passed away a few weeks later I had an independent autopsy performed on her. According to the medical records that were obtained from various hospitals, the surgeon lied to my wife and her family, intentionally surgically mistreated the smaller aneurysm by wrapping it with muslin in order to preserve it on the artery, lied to a hospital consultant after the operation by telling him he properly treated the smaller aneurysm by clipping it, lied to my wife 5.5 years after the operation by telling her symptoms she was exhibiting from the growing aneurysm had nothing to do with the surgery, lied to the obstetrician 7 years after the operation by telling him he operated on a single aneurysm and my wife was showing no further symptoms from it, falsified a document to the life insurance company 7 years after the operation by stating a ct scan was advised 1.5 years prior when his original patient journal does not say that, and his associate the resident neurosurgeon falsified his medical report and discharge sheet shortly after the operation in order to cover up what the surgeons had done to my wife during the operation. The statute of limitations for ordinary medical malpractice negligence in the State of NY is 2.5 years from the date of last appointment unless a foreign object has been left in the patient. What the surgeon and his associates did to my wife, however, does not constitute ordinary negligence. When doctors engage in this type of fraudulent and malicious conduct towards the life of a patient and their actions then result in death or injury to the patient there is no statute of limitations and it can be tolled regardless of how many years later the death or injury to the patient occurs. In the State of New York this theory of law is called equitable estoppel. Mr. Douglas completely ignored every document that did not occur in the past 2.5 years as if it were just irrelevant information. Since my wife hadn’t seen the surgeon in 2 years 10 months from the date she lapsed into a coma and because Mr. Douglas presented limited and erroneous information in his final arguments, the Judge summarily dismissed the lawsuit due to a perceived statute of limitations problem. Instead of presenting all the documents from hospital admission to autopsy report along with depositions that would have clearly demonstrated what the surgeon and his associates were up to, Mr. Douglas presented