Earlier this week, a woman filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against two hospitals in the Joliet area on behalf of her 29-year-old son. The lawsuit claims that both hospitals failed to diagnose her son with a traumatic brain injury in a timely manner. As a result, medical treatment was delayed.
When brain injuries are not treated appropriately or immediately, victims are at risk of suffering further damage, including short-term and long-term physical and mental impairments. The woman who filed the lawsuit on her son’s behalf earlier this week believes that Joliet medical professionals could have prevented some of the effects of her son’s injuries had doctors given her son the appropriate treatment he needed for his traumatic brain injury.
The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court. According to the lawsuit, the man was severely injured in a bar fight in 2009. While the man was leaving a bar, he was punched by another man and hit his head on the pavement of the bar’s parking lot. The man’s skull was fractured in the incident, causing him to suffer a serious brain injury.
After the assault, the man was taken to a hospital in Joliet and later transferred to another local hospital. The lawsuit claims that staff at both hospitals had failed to properly communicate with each other regarding the man’s injuries. As a result, a traumatic brain injury was not diagnosed as quickly as it should have been. The lawsuit also claims that even though Illinois law requires Level II trauma centers to have a neurosurgeon on-call who can make it to the medical center within an hour’s notice, neither hospital could provide a neurosurgeon within an hour.
The traumatic brain injury caused the man, who is a single father, to become blind, mute and paralyzed. The man now lives with his mother so that she can provide him with the care that he needs on a daily basis. The woman believes the effects of her son’s injuries could have been minimized had he received proper treatment by medical professionals.
Source: Southtown Star, “Mom of Tinley Park man paralyzed in Mokena bar fight sues Joliet area hospitals,” Janet Lundquist, Oct. 31, 2012
