Doctor Client Exonerated While Co-Defendants Hit with a $40 Million Verdict
Jun 23, 2023OUTCOME: Defense Verdict
Laura A. DeMartini, managing partner of the DeMartini Firm, PC, as lead counsel, formerly of the law firm Nall & Miller, LLP, secured a defense verdict in Bibb County, Georgia for a hospitalist in Ju ... ne 2023, while the jury issued a $40 million verdict against the doctor’s co-defendants. The jury understood the case theme – justice for the family, and fairness for the doctor. The young woman patient experienced a sickle cell pain crisis in November 2017 when she sought treatment three times at an initial hospital before her death. She was initially sent home with fluids and pain medication from the local hospital. She returned to the same hospital four hours later, and saw a nurse practitioner, who again discharged the patient upon a physician’s advice, although that physician never saw the patient. The family returned with their daughter for the third time before the initial facility transferred the patient via helicopter to the hospital in which Ms. DeMartini’s hospitalist client worked. The patient showed up to the second hospital in acute chest syndrome, a syndrome that was never verbalized to Ms. DeMartini's hospitalist client on the transfer call. Acute chest syndrome is an emergency and much more dangerous than a sickle cell pain crisis. Ms. DeMartini's hospitalist immediately recognized that the patient had acute chest, and that she needed an exchange transfusion of her blood. However, none of the providers at the second hospital, including the ER doctor, the nephrologist, and most importantly, the hematologist, knew how to obtain the exchange transfusion, which could have been set up with the second facility’s contract with the American Red Cross. It is unclear what happened between the time the hospitalist called the hematologist and asked for help to save his patient and the time the order was issued to transfer the patient to a third hospital. What was clear, based upon phone records, was that the hematologist called the blood bank himself, but never followed up to get the procedure done. The hematologist on call testified on Ms. DeMartini's cross-examination that he could have fallen back asleep. Once the providers at the second hospital were told by the blood specialist, the hematologist, and other heads of departments at the second hospital that they could not obtain an exchange transfusion for the young woman, they were ordered to transfer the patient to Atlanta. The young woman coded 10 minutes out from the Atlanta hospital and was resuscitated but died the next day. After three weeks of trial and two hours of deliberation, the jury returned a $40 million verdict against the first two hospitals and attributed zero negligence to Ms. DeMartini’s hospitalist client, an independent contract who admitted the patient while working as an locum tenens physician.
