A Catawba County jury has awarded $600,000 to a man who suffered injuries after doctors severed the wrong abdominal duct while removing his gall bladder in 2011. Attorney Mark Melrose of Asheville said his client Jerry Wayne Roberts checked into ...

Tagged with: Medical Negligence

The estate of a man who suffered a massive heart attack just hours after being sent home from the hospital after complaining of chest pains and tingling in his arms has been awarded more than $6 million, according to one ...

Tagged with: Medical Negligence

A woman injured while undergoing surgery has entered a confidential, pre-trial settlement for $5.3 million two days before her trial was scheduled to begin, her attorneys report. Many of the details of the case are being withheld due to a ...

Tagged with: Medical Negligence Verdicts and Settlements

Rudisil v. United States (Lawyers Weekly No. 14-02-0877, 7 pp.) (James Fox, Sr. J.) 5:13-cv-00110; E.D.N.C. Holding: The administrative notice of medical negligence that plaintiff gave the government makes no mention of her hospital negligence claim, which is predicated on ...

Tagged with: Medical Negligence

Estate of Ray v. Forgy Although under the doctrine of respondeat superior a hospital is liable for the negligence of a physician or surgeon acting as its agent, where a patient has signed separate treatment and release forms with a physician, it suggests the plaintiff looked to the doctor separately and distinctly from the hospital to receive treatment.

Tagged with: Medical Negligence

A young woman walked into a hospital emergency room seeking help for a relatively minor ailment and ended up brain dead after suffering through a series of shocking oversights at the hands of doctors, nurses and pharmacists. The hospital’s mistakes were so profound that it eventually agreed to settle the woman’s medical negligence case for $15.5 million – one of the largest verdicts of its kind in North Carolina history. But the agreement came with an all-too-common catch: The hospital could not be named and the identities of its attorneys and the plaintiff also had to be withheld from the public. Even the court in which the case was filed had to be kept secret. Alan W. Duncan (pictured), Allison O. Van Laningham and Stephen M. Russell Jr. of Greensboro’s Smith Moore Leatherwood, which typically defends health care providers in medical malpractice cases, represented the young woman whose life was altered by the hospital’s negligence.

Tagged with: Medical Negligence

Buried in the White House's federal budget plan is a proposal to encourage states to reform their medical-malpractice laws. The budget proposes a total of $250 million in Department of Justice grants to "provide incentives for state medical malpractice reforms," $100 million for 2012 and $50 million for each of the next three years. It's not the first time President Barack Obama has mentioned med-mal tort reform.

Tagged with: Medical Malpractice Medical Negligence

The state's legal landscape for medical-malpractice lawsuits would undergo a seismic shift and North Carolina would join 28 other states with caps on damages if a bill introduced last week becomes law. The bill, S. 33, is now being debated in the Senate's Judiciary I Committee. At a packed hearing before the committee Thursday, it attracted the attention not only of attorneys and doctors, but also such diverse entities as the AARP and the N.C. Chamber of Commerce. The bill would limit noneconomic damages in medical-malpractice cases to $250,000. It would also require a showing of gross negligence by clear and convincing evidence if the claim involved emergency care, and allow separate trials for liability and damages if either party asks for it.

Tagged with: Damages General Assembly Legislature Medical Malpractice Medical Negligence NCAJ Tort Reform Tort/Negligence

Plaintiff presented on two occasions to his family practice group complaining of a bothersome mole that was irritated. He was assured that there was nothing to worry about. At his wife’s urging, he sought the opinion of a dermatologist who ...

Tagged with: Medical Negligence