Jury rejects bid for damages for medical treatment

PORT ANGELES — Right after three weeks of testimony, a jury very last week took much less than 43 minutes to reject a lawsuit by a Clallam County gentleman looking for
$10.3 million in damages right after getting medical treatment.

Erin Brown experienced sought the award in a civil declare alleging he was addressed in a negligent manner for his medical ailment and alcoholism at Olympic Medical Centre, top to a seizure and a significant brain injuries.

The jury, which was selected commencing Nov. 11, rendered its verdict late Thursday afternoon adhering to the longest Exceptional Courtroom jury trial this yr.

The jurors departed the Vern Burton Group Heart gym, the place the trial was held in spread-out trend to guard versus COVID-19, at 3:28 p.m. Thursday.

Judge Brent Basden made available them the possibility of returning Friday if need to have be, but the jury rendered a decision at 4:12 p.m.

Brown was seeking $10.3 million in earlier and long term financial and non-financial damages in a complaint for medical negligence towards OMC Healthcare facility District 2 and other defendants.

They included licensed Physician Assistant J. Charles Velocity, now retired the emergency-home products and services company Peninsula Crisis Expert services Inc., which was contracted with OMC and employed Velocity, and 10 unnamed plaintiffs referred to in the grievance as “Jane and John Does.”

Two had been identified as nurses by attorney Keith Bruno, representing Brown, who also was represented by the Seattle medical malpractice law business, The Lee Tucker Law Organization.

The nurses ended up employed by OMC.

Brown experienced alleged in his lawsuit, submitted Feb. 6, 2018, that carelessness in his care transpired among Feb. 10, 2016, when he went to OMC’s emergency room for support with his excessive liquor use, and May well 19, 2016, when he frequented the emergency room once more.

“Steed unsuccessful to abide by the applicable conventional of care that was the proximate cause” of the personal injury, Bruno reported.

“A medical supplier has a duty to the affected person.”

Brown’s history of alcoholic beverages withdrawal seizures was documented Feb. 10, 2016, but not on his Could 19, 2016, take a look at, when just his large alcohol use was documented, according to the criticism.

“Mr. Brown ought to have been admitted to an inpatient medical unit and withdrawn from alcohol beneath shut medical supervision to stop the prevalence of seizures,” it explained.

“Because no historical past of withdrawal seizures was obtained or documented on Could 19, 2016, defendants entered an outpatient prescription chlordiazepoxide and apparently despatched Mr. Brown to endure withdrawal at a rehabilitation facility wherever intensive medical supervision was not out there.

“Mr. Brown did subsequently put up with a generalized withdrawal seizures with loss of consciousness and a drop ensuing in critical traumatic mind injury that has left him very seriously and completely disabled.”

The defendants failed to recognize, consider, diagnose, control and deal with Brown’s liquor and medical affliction, the complaint alleged.

“Defendants’ medical errors caused Mr. Brown’s brain harm,” in accordance to the grievance.

Bruno stated damages as past financial damages, $57,960 future economic damages, $715,105 past general financial damages, $4 million, and long term non-financial damages, like for “a brain injury of this magnitude,” of $5 million.

Malpractice lawyer Michele Atkins of Seattle, representing Speed, explained medical companies experienced specified Brown a sufficient typical of care and had been not responsible for the injuries he sustained soon after he remaining the emergency room.

She mentioned Specialty Companies was sufficiently educated to detect alcohol withdrawal indicators and acted accordingly.

“A medical supplier can’t promise that a affected person will leave the medical center, the doctor’s place of work, the crisis section, and not working experience threat, and not expertise that outcome,” Atkins explained.

She said testimony showed, for case in point, that people with congestive heart failure and a record of heart assaults are discharged from the medical center even nevertheless medical doctors know they are at possibility of possessing a heart assault.

“Why is that the standard of care? Mainly because our task is to handle the medical disorders [and] discharge them to observe up with care on an outpatient foundation,” she explained.

“Withdrawing from alcoholic beverages is a significant condition. There is danger related with that, no question about it. But we listened to from multiple witnesses that the probable, the prospective for possibility, is not, are unable to mean a rationale to hold a patient in the hospital.”

She referred to a jury instruction that said a inadequate medical end result is not, by itself, proof of negligence.

“The position of the health care company is not to warranty that very little terrible will at any time occur to their client,” Atkins said.

“You don’t get to consider the final result, and switch it into the conventional of treatment,” she claimed.

“So when Mr. Bruno claims, well, didn’t he have a seizure just a few several hours afterwards, what I imagine he’s striving to conflate is the consequence with what the conventional of treatment demands.”

She reported Brown was responsible for his problem.

“He chose not to take the help and applications and the methods to assistance himself,” she said.

“But I really don’t consider he receives to occur right here and check with you for dollars, tens of millions of dollars of revenue, for the final result of [those] decisions.”

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Senior Personnel Writer Paul Gottlieb can be achieved at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at [email protected].