$11.7 Million Verdict For Paralyzed Teenager After Botched Surgery
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Imagine you are a 19-year-old teenager in your freshman year of college and you are experiencing chronic back pain. Imagine that you are told you should have a rather normal back surgery in order to correct the problem. You are reluctant to have the surgery at first, after all no one likes surgery, but get convinced by your doctors that it is a good idea. You walk into the surgery but you never walk out. No you did not die as a result, but due to numerous errors made by your doctors during the surgery, you are now paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of your life. You are told you will NEVER walk again. Ponder that for a minute....
This unfortunate scenario is exactly what happened to Joshua Coleman. Fortunately for Joshua, however, a Fulton County jury (Atlanta, Georgia) realized the seriousness of this situation and awarded him $11.7 million yesterday after a two week medical malpractice trial in which they found a doctor and the responsible hospital accountable for their life changing mistakes.
Coleman's attorneys blame his paralysis on a mistake by his Cumming-based spine surgeon, Dr. Stephen B. James, and a team of doctors at North Fulton Medical Center. James and his employer, Resurgens, P.C., agreed to an out-of-court settlement in January.But the neurologist, Dr. Frank Puhalovich, insisted he was blameless and he, and co-defendant North Fulton Neurology P.C., took their chances at trial, where they were found negligent by the jury.
The monitor sounded an alarm during the surgery, which Coleman's lawyers say should have prompted his doctors to remove screws and rods installed during the operation. The doctors should also have performed a standard "wake-up test," which involves cutting back anesthesia so the patient can be asked to wiggle his toes to indicate his nerves are undamaged, Coleman's attorneys say.
The rods and screws were removed within six hours, but by that time, the damage was done, according to Coleman's attorneys who say the devices were pressing against his spinal cord and should have been removed within minutes â€" not hours.
Tort reformers most likely will use this as a prime example of another runaway jury verdict in the medical malpractice context. They will not tell you these doctors deviated from the standard of care most any other doctors would have used in this case. They will not tell you this doctor should have done a wake up test when an alarm went off in the operating room to ensure nothing like this would happen to the young man in the prime of his life. They will not tell you that the medal rods and pins should have been removed as soon as possible instead of waiting hours and hours later to do so. There are many other factors and considerations to this unfortunate incident as well, but you will not hear about those or see a photo of Joshua in his wheelchair for the rest of his natural life. Instead, you will hear something to the effect of: See, these juries just award huge amounts of money for no real reason at all and something must be done to prevent it. That unquestionably will be easy for them to say but ask Joshua if he feels the same way. Ask yourself, if this happened to you, would you think such a result was justified?
I for one do not buy into it. There are cases out there where real mistakes have been made and redress for those life changing mistakes is appropriate. Others that lack substantial merit get weeded out by judges in our judicial system long before they ever reach a jury. If you were on the panel of 12 for Joshua's case, I have no doubt you too would have found it to be one deserving of a just verdict against those who caused Joshua's life to detrimentally change forever.