For those who insist that the American jury system is simply pro-plaintiff, you need to look at the case of Lisa Strong, 44. The mother of two went to a hospital for kidney stones and ended up losing both her arms and legs. A jury in Fort Lauderdale, Florida rule in favor the defendant doctors and South Broward Hospital District across the board.
Strong went to the Memorial Hospital West in 2004 for the kidney stones and experienced what the doctors described as complications.
After the surgery, Strong had a series of heart attacks that restricted blood flow to her limbs.
For the full story, click here.
clarence darrow:
Now that comment to Don was out of line. I suspect his decision was made in the best interest of his family to obtain benefits for his wife under the household income rules. If not, who cares? It’s doesn’t affect the discussion. On the “greedy” plaintiff’s lawyers, I couldn’t figure a way to get it in there. Maybe you can help!
Don:
“We continue to be unsure, shocked and amazed.”
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And so am I. I hope she fights on with the appeal, and gets that other unnamed physician, whom the jury apparently felt was responsible, into court. What you experienced is the old trick of blaming the one physician who wasn’t named in the suit. I have even seen those unnamed physicians testify and “fall on their sword” at trial to protect the defendants in the case. More “courageous” is when the physicians get the nurses to “fall on their swords” to cover the doctor’s mistakes. Welcome to the high-stakes world of medical malpractice litigation.
Thank you for your insights,and I wish you, Lisa, and your children, well.
mespo727272 you left out greedy plaintiff lawyers
strongdon why did you not stand by your woman?
As Lisa’s ex-husband, (we were married at the time of her entrance to the hospital and for just short of 4 years afterward), I wish to present one of the ironies of one of the “facts” in her case. The statement that “she came in in the middle of the night extremely critically ill at that time, and we did our best for her to get her into the hospital and have other specialists take care of her,” by Mr. Nosich is amazing to me. I was there! Consider that she was triaged at a priority 2 (not the highest priority) at about 2:15 AM as the evidence in the case clearly showed. We arrived at the door of the ER at about 12:15 AM, about 2 hrs earlier. She then was treated in the ER until about 8:15 A.M. when she was FINALLY admitted to the hospital to be treated by “other specialists”. It is incredible to us all that someone who was so “critically ill” was allowed to be “critically ill” for so long without her being treated as being “critically ill”.
As Lisa’s husband and the only person in our family who was in their right mind at the time AND paying attention to the incidents in the treatment of Lisa, (Lisa was QUITE sick and our kids were 4 and 5 years old at the time), it was apparent to me that the hospital still didn’t know what exactly was wrong with Lisa even at the time she was admitted to the hospital at around 8:15. Obviously, we now know exactly what was wrong with Lisa and that the hospital didn’t know for sure at that time. That in itself is not negilence. However, for someone who was so “critically ill” and had been for hours, the urgency and priority seemed to be lacking from my viewpoint. Again, I was there!!
As people, we depend on our health care profesionals to “do the right thing” when it comes to our treatment. I can assure you, as a very concerned spectator during Lisa’s treatment, I was not very well assured or informed as to Lisa’s condition until it was way too late and Lisa’s sickness was in it’s advanced stages. Indeed, it’s amazing she’s still alive. The defense in this case did what they did to question the facts in this case, raise doubt and present their clients in the best light. In the end the jury agreed with them. The finger pointing and ironies in Lisa’s case and her treatment are numerous and still exist. Ultimately, Lisa and our family lives with the jury’s decision. I will always wonder if justice was really achieved and if the “right thing” was done for Lisa and our family, or was it that a defense was made to thwart paying millions of dollars in compensation for damages from the defendants to Lisa. We continue to be unsure, shocked and amazed.
Donald N.Strong
jim nossich:
“I will now wait for some very creative yet ineffective appeal to be filed as a last ditch effort to hold people responsible for something they are not.”
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Overconfidence about outcomes on appeal makes for foolish-looking lawyers with fewer clients. As to your comment about my bias in favor of plaintiffs, I plead guilty. I have a soft spot for horribly injured victims, don’t you? However, I do not think every case should be won by plaintiffs, just those in which one of defense lawyers tells me that “many, many millions” were offered in settlement, and also tells the world that another doctor who was not named in the suit could be the reason for the jury’s decision. “I think the jury probably laid it all on her.” Culpability (and hence victim status for plaintiff) thus seems established then as to at least one physician by, of all persons, one of the defense team. BTW that lawyer was Jim Nosich, Esq.
I am more inclined to accept the pitiful words of the victim, Ms. Strong, who said: “Every step of the way they did something wrong, and they all pointed fingers at each other, and that’s probably why I lost because the jury couldn’t figure out what was what.” Defense by shell game and blaming the empty chair–seen it before. Seems though, she agrees with Mr. Nosich. Maybe the gray men of the appellate court will agree with her. It wouldn’t be the first appeal decided on natural justice, whatever the technical merits of plaintiff’s assignments of error. We call those appellate decisions the seminal cases.
Dear Mespo,
Are you really a pl’s atty?
If so, you would understand that winning at trial, on either side, has many components.
Unfortunately, you believe that when the plaintiff wins it is justice and when the defendants win it is a misjustice, no matter the situation.
For you to believe that we thought there was liability because we offered a settlement is very unlawyer-like thinking. If you are a lawyer, you would know that settlement is based on risks. If you don’t know that then you are not really a plaintiffs atty or a “trial lawyer” by any means.
The risk is getting jurors who believe like you: bad injury must equal bad negligence.
I agree with Darrow, the case was probably won by a couple of comedians from the South Side of Chicago.
“The jury has spoken.” I will now wait for some very creative yet ineffective appeal to be filed as a last ditch effort to hold people responsible for something they are not.
clarence darrow:
I agree with your points and I will also agree that behind most every disastrous result there is either a stupid defense lawyer or a plaintiff’s lawyer who has no control over his client. That said, this case is an injustice and there’s no shining it otherwise. And the Army Ranger? Yeesh!!!
I am a very successful Plaintiffs malpractice lawyer.If you are offered a lot of money although it may be less than what you or your client “WANTS” it is your job to get the stars out of your eyes and out of you clients eyes and get the case settled.
After all we are out to represent clients not ourselves and certainly not supposed to be driven by our personal glory or greed .
Of course I am not one of them there ” Big Shot” lawyers , but then again i did not preside or engineer this clients catastrophic result! were any issues smissed?Did her lawyers link up all the issues and close the little(big)gaps in her story? Were they out lawyered by a couple of street comedians from Chicago?
Better yet who was the Plaintiffs genius that left an Army Ranger on the Jury?
Urrah!
jim nosich:
My, my Jim awfully touchy for a victor. I guess magnanimity is not a strong suit. If you think legislators act because one group gets “too greedy” I shall confidently await profit caps on health care for-profit companies and the oil industry in your state. I think I shall have a long wait. Also, I am intrigued that a case with no obvious merit as proclaimed by your jury brought “many, many millions” in settlement offers. Given the database and in my experience, you guys don’t offer anything unless you feel bare-assed and thus I suspect that even you, in a quiet truthful moment, don’t believe justice was done by that jury that “has spoken.” BTW I judge this case by your comments and that of the accounts I read and my knowledge of a broken system that unequivocally insures payment of your fee regardless of performance. Funny there is no move afoot to cap defense costs, just the damages that plaintiff’s can recover. Try to lighten your conscience if you will, but not at my expense.
Oh and Clarence Darrow ( I shudder to type the words since Darrow would never be so obtuse), plaintiff’s lawyers, as risk takers, get paid very well thank you. My lament was for the tragically injured victim here who lives with the result of this slanted system not her lawyer who understood the risks.
stop whining! as plaintiff’s lawyer you puts your money down ,you takes your chances and when the roll is snake eyes you should not whimper and whine!Suck it up act like men and move on!
In response to mespo727272, the ONLY reason that the legislature and the citizens voted for a cap on damages is because plaintiff’s attorneys had been too greedy. Pigs get fed and hogs getg slaughtered.
Secondly, Mrs. Strong left many, many millions on the table before trial. There was enough money to take care of every single economic need for her and her children, and her children’s children. In fact, the defense never even disputed the pl’s economic claim, not one dime.
Thirdly, the firm representing the plaintiff firm is one of the most successful in the Southeast U.S. I guarantee you there were no financing problems there to get an excellent prosecution. In fact, they had more experts than most of the defendants.
My version of the truth and the pl’s version of the truth was the same. The jury deciding that not every wrong is negligence. But you seem to already know all of the facts of the case based on your analysis of what happened. Or, maybe you weren’t there and you judge a case by your biases.
“The jury has spoken.” Just like it does when a plaintiff or your client prevails.
jim nosich:
Obviously, you did your job and the jury accepted your version of the truth. I suppose you would agree, and as studies have routinely shown, that juries identify more with the “poor” defendant physician than the “greedy” plaintiff. In addition to this advantage, the defense has unlimited resources, most important of which is an unending stream of expert witnesses, usually insured by the same med mal carrier, to call upon to overwhelm the plaintiff’s experts. You know that sometmes those same med mal cariers even call our experts to find out just why they are helping the plaintiff’s case. They do that only when they insure our experts too, and it’s all routine or innocuous, of course.
In addition, the costs of these cases are staggering, approaching the $100,000.00 to $200,000.00 range just for experts and associated costs which cannot be recovered. Finally, the healthcare crowd has successfully convinced the jury pool that most malpractice cases are frivolous with their incessant advertising and promotion of the few “bad apple cases” such that the public believes they are the norm. Put that all together with the statutory limits on recovery of non-economic (and even economic damages, like here in VA) and the fearmongering that doctors are just quitting because of high malpractice premiums, and you have a system just short of being rigged which makes your job much easier than it should be. Amazing that all this protection for affluent doctors comes at a time when the healthcare companies and physicians are reaping huge economic rewards unheard of just a few years ago before our healthcare was driven from the charities and public sector into the private sector.
Sleep blissfully my colleague in the knowledge that the system we have all created denied a limbless mother the ability to care for her children and whose only negliegnce seems to be relying on her well-heeled physicians to make her well. It’s positively Dickensian!
— a plaintiff’s lawyer.
I am the atty that represented the ER doc. The jury listened intently to 2 month of testimony. There were no tricks by either side. Just the facts and expert testimony. Every expert agreed that just because there is a horrible end result doesn’t mean there is negligence. Anybody that believes that every patient that goes into the hospital should come out normal except if there is med malpractice will never be allowed to sit on the jury because they are too biased. Believe it or not, there are patients that go in sick and won’t get better since the doctors/nurses are human and not God. Thank god the jury was able to set aside the sympathy and judge the case on the facts. I think that is what we would all want if we were ever sued for anything.
Mike-
The conservative line about “frivolous lawsuits” is a cover for the real agenda, cutting off money to the Democratic Party. Along with unions, trial lawyers have long been the Democratic Party’s most reliable and generous donors, and without them, the party, both at the state and federal level, would have few other funding options. That has always been the real goal of tort “reform”.
This is a tough one. I really feel horrible for the patient. However,
the article does not mention if the patient knew what her condition may or may not lead to. Obviously the hospital is pleased. It just does not sound right.
Well I guess Hospital Attorney Tom Aubin said it best: “We are pleased with the verdict, but the South Broward really makes no comment other than to wish Mrs. Strong and her family the best of luck in the future.” That’s it you pays your money, lose your legs, and get a hearty “good luck,” and a handshake. Oh that’s right she lost both arms too. Well that’s the way it goes –see ya.
Or as Dickens puts it in “Oliver Twist”:
“If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass–a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience–by experience.”
The article doesn’t provide much info, however, if the actions of the hospital are as egregious as the headlines lead me to believe, I hope plaintiff’s attorney filed for a JNOV to preserve an appeal.
I remember my torts professor getting the wingnuts in my claas all excited by describinh the torts system, or virtual lack there of, in Australia. He then immediately turned them off the Australian system by explaining that the reason for the watered down system was the excellent public health care system which took care of the plaintiff’s expenses.
The evil done by the faux conservative movement lives on. Their demeaning of tort litigation has turned many people’s heads upside down when it comes to who they believe has equity in lawsuits. Years of watching propagandists, like John Stossel, has convinced them that the “poor” corporations are beleaguered by “frivolous” lawsuits. The question is how do we re-educate people as to the utility of the law to improve our lives and its’ centrality to maintaining our Constitution and a modicum of liberty? I believe the re-introduction of the centrality of history, civics and social studies back into public school curriculum’s is one answer,
but that will face monumental battles from the faux right.