Marilyn Leisz has a novel tort lawsuit in Paterson, New Jersey. A jury is deliberating over her claim that Bergen County plastic surgeon Dr. Paul Parker botched her plastic surgery so that she can no longer close her eyes.
Parker was retained to perform an eyelid surgery called a blepharoplasty.
What makes the case a difficult one is that Parker was the last of a line of doctors who did plastic surgery on Leisz. A prior doctor left bumps on her eyelids and Leisz went to Parker to correct the problem. She alleges that he never warned her of the risks of the procedure and that she later found that she was not a good candidate for such a procedure.
There is also the challenge of determining the damages in such a case. Leisz insists that she can no longer do a variety of sports and other activities. She is the mother of two and the damages should obviously be quite high. This is the type of injury that is likely to appall jurors. That makes it all the more important for Parker’s lawyers to win on the merits. They are arguing that she was warned of the risks and that there was no negligence in the surgery. No procedure is risk free and Parker’s lawyers are arguing that he performed the operation according to standards of a reasonable surgeon in his area of expertise.
Parker’s background is stated on his site:
Dr. Parker graduated Magna Cum Laude and a member of Phi Beta Kappa from Union College in Schenectady, New York. He subsequently graduated from George Washington University of Medicine in Washington, DC, where he was the recipient of the distinguished CV Mosby Award of Excellence.
Dr. Parker completed residencies in both General Surgery and Plastic Surgery at New York University Medical Center and while there received the Theodore Barnett Award for Excellence in Teaching. During this training, he spent six months at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital exclusively learning cosmetic surgery techniques with some of the acknowledged masters in the field. He also completed a fellowship in Microsurgery at New York University Medical Center’s Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery with heavy emphasis on innovative methods of breast reconstruction.
Source: Gothamist
Jonathan Turley
Over the months I’ve seen you hijack and destroy all reasonable and on-topic discussion of health issues with your poisonous and all-consuming vendetta against the medical profession.
Well congratulations. I will no longer contribute to a blog the continues to tolerate your disruption. I am unsubscribing from the feed from this otherwise excellent blog.
We don’t bash medicine, Tony. You’ll find our work on “60 MInutes” and “Dateline.” You’ll find it included in the annual reports by the Health Research Group.
“Filth?”
You’re an idiot.
We bash the lab coat lunacy that is reflected in the matter under discussion.
And the matter under discussion here is yet another physician screw-up, however as honest a mistake as this one may be.
And if you are of the opinion that 400-500 unnecessarily dead citizens per day isn’t the true filth, then my guess is you need more help than modern medicine can provide.
Just hope your MD isn’t one of the 11,000 on our list. Because if he or she happens to be one who piles up 25-50 med-mal lawsuits per year, there is a real good chance you’ll never know it.
Oh here we go again with the medic-bashing droid. Give it a rest, go and tell your coordinator to find a new blog for you to spam with your filth.
I am certain this experience is no picnic for the patient, and she certainly has my sympathy.
But on the continuum of Daffy Doc screw-ups in any given year, this one wouldn’t register a 1.1 on the shenanigan Richter scale.
We live in a society where 50 MDs a week find themselves in deep doo-doo, after committing one idiocy or another: secret cameras filming nude patients; off-the-chart drug-running; medical fraud beyond belief; patient sexual molestation while under anesthesia.
So it surely appears we’ve reached an ignoble distinction in this country: As medical care becomes less trustworthy, killing and maiming more people than at any other time in history, we are naive enough to wonder why insurance charges go right through the roof.
And pete swoops in with the practical answer once again.
she should’ve went with the boob job. then nobody’d be looking at her eyes.
This is happening here in Jersey and I caught this on the local news the other night,and natuarlly the remedy is more surgery.
Lottakatz,
“Nasty w/pictures:”
They are pretty gnarly …
It’s a surgery that has more than one surgical component that can go wrong or be botched. The details of the surgery on this woman and the specific allegations regarding the surgery would be interesting; did he remove too much of the eyelid, was there nerve damage etc..
I know a guy that had this ind of surgery done because he had too much tissue in his eyelids and it was interfering with his vision! He was thrilled with the surgery. It was kind of funny because his doctor wanted to do one eye at a time (for insurance payment reasons- to save this person some money) so one of his eyes looked ‘younger’ as a side effect, than the other one for a while.
Nasty w/pictures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blepharoplasty
rafflaw,
“maybe the people who voted for the Wisconsin thieves should get this surgery so that their eyes will finally be wide open!”
Lol – you can add Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, etc., etc., etc. …
I agree with your assessment – Does anyone go to a plastic surgeon asking for him or her to make it so ones eyes are permanently open?
Shame on the doc for attempting to justify it.
Stamford,
maybe the people who voted for the Wisconsin thieves should get this surgery so that their eyes will finally be wide open!
I just don’t understand how the doctor could claim that making her eyes unable to close and the eyes were able to be opened and shut prior to the operation, that it is not negligence!? I can understand if she was suing for the bumps that she should be shown the door, but this business about her eyes not being able to close is significant damage, in my honest non-medical opinion.
Well at least she does not have a beard….
That’s got to suck, going through life with eyes wide open …
As a woman, I really don’t get why women have plastic surgery. Maybe I’m not vain enough? Oh well … I plan on going out the same way I came in – naked and all body parts intact with no additions or subtractions 😀
Cosmetic surgery is one of those subjects where our emotions about the patients and those who perform the surgery–often both quite negative–are pitted against one another.
But the bottom line: the merits of the case should determine the verdict. If the patient was informed of the risks and there was no negligence in the procedure, the court should find for the defendant.
This reminds me a little of the botched surgery on the man who killed Judge Lefcoe’s relatives. Which was a crime and a sin. He was left with a disintegrating jaw, permanently disabled.
One difference is that that man was a plumber, went to a county hospital, and was pro se. Therefore he got no hearing and no mediation. This woman obviously has a lot of money and a lawyer so you think she should get substantial damages. But the other litigant’s damages were much more significant — he was facing inevitable death and because he was only a plumber and not married and uninsured, he was facing death in a gutter. No one had any sympathy for him at all.
For years the public has been exposed to an endless stream of messages about how tort damages should be denied. Maybe this litigant will get a Bergen County jury who will be sympathetic. But more likely they will be envious of her medical insurance and access to the best lawyers and the best doctors. The fact is that she was warned of the risks and she chose to have surgery only for beauty.
Saying that it will interfere with her lifestyle isn’t convincing for me.
My mother had a similar surgery and liked the results even if her eyelids were a little lumpy. The New Jersey woman pushed to get a procedure that over 90% of the population can not even consider getting these days because most of us are poor.
Chastise me in advance for the tasteless joke . . .