- $14,000,000 Brain and Burn Injuries Settlement (Illinois): This case involved a surgical fire that severely burned a little baby, causing horrific and permanent injuries. It should be obvious to anyone reading this that no one, ever, under any circumstances, should ever have to worry about being burned while under anesthesia in a hospital operating room. And, indeed, Medicare and the Joint Commission among others call surgical fires “never-events,” meaning they are events that should never happen. In this case, though, the hospital ignored (and continues to ignore) calls from hospital safety organizations to make sure that all doctors who are allowed access to hospital operating rooms be trained in fire safety. Here, the surgeon and anesthesiologist didn’t understand basic fire safety and the result was tragic. This case is an example of how lawyers serve their community by holding hospitals accountable to making medicine safer.
- $10,900,000 Brain-Injury Settlement (Illinois): This was a bacterial meningitis case. Our firm has successfully handled several bacterial meningitis cases over the years, which is one of the most tragic statements we can make because these cases usually involve children and are almost always preventable. The key to surviving bacterial meningitis intact is to get antibiotic medicine as fast as possible. In this case, a little two-year old boy was brought to the emergency department with several signs and symptoms of bacterial meningitis. The triage nurse saw how ill he was and didn’t waste time getting him to the treatment room, telling the ER nurse that he needed to see a doctor “right away.” Unfortunately, the ER nurse didn’t understand what she was doing, and although the ER was not busy and there were two other doctors available to see him, the boy didn’t get seen by a doctor for several hours and didn’t get any antibiotics for nearly ten hours. As a result, he is now profoundly brain injured.
- $4,350,000 Brain Injury Pretrial Settlement (Illinois): Sometimes women have uncontrolled bleeding immediately after delivering a child. If left untreated, the woman can die. It is, therefore, a condition that the physicians must watch for and treat immediately. In this case, a young woman had uncontrolled bleeding after delivering her first child. Although she was in the hospital, her signs of distress went unnoticed. She bled for some time and, as a result, she suffered severe brain damage.
- $4,000,000 Brain Injury-Pretrial Settlement (Illinois): Severe headaches should never be ignored. They can be signs of infection or something called a brain aneurysm (sometimes also called cerebral or intracranial aneurysm). A brain aneurysm is an abnormal bulging in one of the arteries of the brain. If you’ve ever blown up a long balloon, an aneurysm is like the bulge in the balloon when you first start to inflate it. This bulge is usually very thin, and susceptible to leaking or breaking. When a brain aneurysm leaks, it causes severe headaches. If a doctor ignores severe headaches, the leak can grow and cause profound brain injury. A doctor diagnoses a brain aneurysm by a test called an MRA, or magnetic resonance angiography, which takes a picture of the arteries in the brain. In this case, the patient came in with severe headaches, the doctor ordered an MRA, but the radiologist misread the MRA, which showed a very large and dangerous brain aneurysm. The brain aneurysm leaked and caused severe brain injury.
- $2,500,000 Brain Injury-Pretrial Settlement (Florida): After surgery, patients are brought to a place called the recovery room. It is called the recovery room because it is the place where the patient recovers from the anesthesia. Basically, it is the place where the nurses and doctors watch the patient to make sure they wake up. In this case, the nurses failed to monitor the breathing of a forty-three year old woman who was struggling to come out of her sedation. As a result, she was deprived of oxygen and suffered severe brain injury.
- $1,750,000 Wrongful Death-Pretrial Settlement (Illinois): This was another brain aneurysm case, except here, the doctor (radiologist) recognized the aneurysm, but failed to communicate his findings to the physician who ordered the test. The physician did not receive the written report until after a 3 day holiday. In the interim, the brain aneurysm ruptured and the patient, an elderly man, died.
- $1,350,000 Brain Injury Pretrial Settlement (Illinois): A breast biopsy is a simple, routine procedure. Here, during the procedure, a woman suffered a heart attack which caused brain damage.
If you have suffered a serious injury caused by medical malpractice, or a loved one has been seriously injured or died, we invite you to contact our firm and talk to one of our physician attorneys about whether a lawsuit would protect your best interests.
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