Articles Posted in Medical Malpractice

The family of a woman killed by her husband can sue the husband’s doctor, the Utah Supreme Court held in February. In B.R. and C.R. v. West, et al, the children of Kristy Ragsdale sued the doctor and nurse practitioner who treated the children’s father, David Ragsdale, alleging that the mixture of medications they prescribed caused a deterioration of David Ragdale’s mental state that led to Kristy Ragsdale’s murder. The trial court ruled for the defendants, finding that no doctor-patient relationship existed between the plaintiffs and the defendants. The Supreme Court overturned the verdict, which could significantly impact medical practices all over the country. Some states already hold doctors liable for certain third-party injuries, but the question remains open in many situations.

David Ragsdale was a patient of Dr. Hugo Roeder and nurse practitioner Trina West at a clinic in Draper, Utah. According to the court’s opinion, West prescribed six or more medications for Ragsdale, under Roeder’s supervision. These included psychotropic drugs like Concerta, Valium, Paxil, and Doxepin; and the steroids pregnenolone and testosterone.

Ragsdale and his wife were reportedly estranged during this time, and she had petitioned for a restraining order against him. West reportedly modified Ragsdale’s drug regimen in November or December 2007, after he told her about the divorce and restraining order. While Ragsdale had all of these drugs in his system, he shot and killed Kristy Ragsdale the morning of Sunday, January 6, 2008 in their church parking lot. He pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in 2009 and will serve at least thirty years in prison. Although Ragsdale took responsibility for the killing, he said he does not believe he would have done it but for the medications.

The Ragsdales’ children, identified only as B.R. and C.R., were only four and nineteen months old at the time of the murder. Their conservator, William Jeffs, filed a lawsuit in 2010 against Roeder and West for medical malpractice in prescribing medications with alleged risks of psychiatric side effects. The trial judge dismissed the case in February 2011 on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they were not patients of Roeder and West. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case directly, bypassing the appellate courts. It ruled in February 2012 that the defendants have a duty to nonpatients “to exercise reasonable care in the affirmative act of prescribing medications that pose a risk of injuries to third parties.”

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According to an article published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, most doctors will face at least one medical malpractice lawsuit as a defendant by the time they turn 65. Their findings come from looking at the files of a national malpractice insurance carrier.

The five most-sued specialties, with its doctors having a 99% chance of being sued by the time they celebrate their 65th birthday, are:

• Thoracic cardiovascular surgery

An appeals court isn’t letting a deceased doctor off the hook for his share of a Washington DC medical malpractice settlement owed to a woman who sustained serious injuries because anticoagulants were improperly administered to her. Per the court, the estate of Ronald Kurstin, MD must pay $1 million of a $2 million settlement.

The plaintiff, Rosalee Blue, was administered the heparin compound Lovenox during an abdominal hernia repair procedure at Sibley Memorial Hospital on April 2004. It was Dr. Kurstin who directed anesthesiologist Dr. John Lordan to give Blue the anticoagulant.

Unfortunately, the medication caused her to experience spinal bleeding and suffer permanent injuries, including impaired mobility and bladder and bowel dysfunction. Blue also continues to experience chronic pain.

11 years after he was mistakenly diagnosed with HIV, an appeals court has said that Terry Hedgepeth’s $20 million Washington DC medical malpractice lawsuit against the Whitman-Walker Clinic can proceed. His original complaint was dismissed on the grounds that he did not sustain any physical injuries from the medical mistake. However, now that the DC Appeals Court has changed the law in the District, emotional injury can be grounds for such a case. Hedgepeth wants compensation for emotional distress, anxiety, weight loss, loss of contact with family and friends, psychiatric facility commitment, suicidal tendencies, depression, damage to his reputation, lost earnings (past, present, and future,) and loss of almost four years of a normal life.

The clinic diagnosed Hedgepeth, now, 42, with HIV on December 13, 2000. He says that the news broke him and he ended up in a psychiatric ward. After his release, he sough treatment for his disease and obtained regular blood tests from the clinic. At the same time, however, he says that his life in havoc. He broke ties with his family because he didn’t want them to know that he was HIV-positive. He also moved into a Whitman-Walker run house for homeless patients, took cocaine, and wanted to die. All the while, he continued to show no signs of infection and he never had to take any meds to treat his HIV.

Four years later, Hedgepeth decided to try holistic treatments and went to the Abundant Life Clinic. A blood test he took there gave him an HIV-negative result. He also tested negative at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

According to a report issued last week by the city’s Office of the Inspector General, the paramedic who told Edward L. Givens to take Pepto-Bismol for acid reflux hours before the 39-year-old suffered a fatal heart attack was either unaware of or failed to follow a number of department protocols. Givens died on December 2, 2008 after paramedics failed to take him to the hospital when he called to report chest pains and breathing problems. He died six hours later. His family would go on to file a $17 million Washington DC medical malpractice case against the District and Emergency Medical Services alleging wrongful death.

Although initially the District had sought to have the case dismissed on the grounds that case law doesn’t permit someone hurt by an emergency worker to sue for medical malpractice, earlier this year a judge said that because of a new statute letting victims hold paramedics liable for negligence, the DC wrongful death lawsuit could proceed.

According to this latest report, even though Givens declined to go to the hospital after paramedics asked him multiple times if he wanted to go, the emergency responders should have done more to convince him. One emergency worker reportedly told Givens when he asked if he needed to go to the hospital that it was up to him. The inspector general’s report also found that emergency workers were at fault for not recording key information on Givens’ peatient care report, such as his age, first name, medical history, and interactions with family members.