GYN Malpractice Suit
Like everyone here on this thread, I am so sorry for your wife's pain and suffering and for the anguish this is causing you.
What I want to say to you, you may have already heard from your attorney. But in trying to absorb so much under such stressful circumstances, sometimes it is hard to keep your perspective. So take a deep breath; let it out slowly and bear with me
The expert opinion your attorney is looking for at this point could not be more crucial to your case. There will be other experts and other opinions down the line, but they will have the advantage of time and - hopefully - a set of unaltered medical records.
In addition to the writ and complaint that will be filed to start your lawsuit, your attorney must include
his own oath that he has submitted the plaintiff's medical records for review and thus obtained the opinion of an expert - or experts - from within the same field or specialty of the named defendent(s) and that this opinion is that the care and treatment received by the plaintiff at the hands of the named defendent(s) was negligent in that it deviated from a reasonable standard of care. This is termed a "Certificate of Merit" in many states. The wording surely varies from state to state, but at this point, the expert is not identified, nor are the specifics of his opinion included in the complaint.
But this is not the only thing your attorney is relying on this expert for: he needs to know who to sue and how and when the care deviated from a reasonable standard. Ensuring that the complaint names the correct defendents seems obvious, but if responsibility is not parceled out correctly - and
especially if a defendent is omitted, it can turn a case on its head; as can failing to pinpoint the negligence that was the proximal cause of injury. Two examples:
An otherwise healthy, vital 47 year old begins to experience chest pain. He goes to his local ER and is transferred to a large, prominent university-affiliated medical center to under go an angiogram and balloon angioplasty, which is uneventful. Protocol calls for post-procedure administration of a drug called ReoPro by IV - it's a drug that inhibits the ability of platelets to aggregate and form clots. Several hours after the procedure, the man begins to bleed profusely at the femoral site - an expected complication. As the bleeding becomes increasingly severe, the man is given multiple transfusions of packed red blood cells and - to counteract the effect of the ReoPro - massive amount of various clotting factors; fresh frozen plasma and platelets. His vital signs improve and the bleeding eventually stops. He is transferred from Cardiac ICU onto the floor and plans for his discharge begin. But he does not feel well. And over the next
three weeks he feels less and less well; with an uneasiness that he cannot explain, although he tries. He is seen by literally every service, including psych and is determined to be "depressed" - not unusual under the circumstances. One evening during his fourth week of hospitalization, he becomes acutely ill; unable to breathe and in terrible pain. He dies in the elevator on the way to the cardiac cath lab of massive pulmonary emboli.
When his records were reviewed, they showed that although the treatment plan called for resuming anticoagulation therapy after he was transferred to the floor - and that he received an appropriate daily dose of heparin to accomplish this - his APTT (Activated Partial Thromboplastin Time) - the blood test used to monitor the effects of theraputic heparin -
never rose to any level that would indicate he was even receiving heparin, and certainly not to a level where he would be considered anticoagulated. And no one did anything about it.
So. There's the negligence, right? That's what the "expert" said. And the complaint was drafted accordingly. On closer inspection - when the case was headed for the dormancy list - it was determined that the man never actually received the ReoPro, that such extrodinary measures were taken to reverse. And all those clotting factors and plasma and platelets that he received? They disrupted his coagulation cascade so badly as to render him a virtual clotting machine - hence the pulmonary emboli.
The case had to be withdrawn and the man's wife received nothing.
A delayed C-section and meconium aspiration in a post-mature infant results in cerebral palsy and massive retardation. It appeared very straightforward and as close to a slam-dunk as med mal ever gets. The expert comes through with the opinion that the attending physician - the only one the mother ever saw from the group - was the negligent party. But the associate attorney drafts a complaint naming both the attending physician AND the partner who interpreted the one sonogram the woman underwent. The senior attorney is upset and says the associate always wants to sue everyone and that she is "muddying the waters" and should go home and knit an afghan. When she refuses, he fires her for the 4th time in two years, but then calls her at home and yells at her for missing work. The complaint is filed naming the two partners. Within four months, the OB practice disbands when the partner who interpreted the sonogram settles in the high, HIGH 6-figures; leaving the idiot attending to swing in the breeze for his, much more significant - part in the tragedy - with no one to transfer blame to. (The associate - who had found clerical inconsistencies in the various places in the medical record that the sonogram results appeared - got two weeks off and a hefty bonus. But when she returned from Belize, the records from the ReoPro case were on her desk)
Which (finally) brings me to my point: you need this expert to be right. If the first one was taking too long, it was probably because he is "the best in his field" - and is sought out nationwide.
This is going to take a long, long time: probably the better part of 5 years. If you win, they can appeal. Even if they agree to settle - and that is rare in a case with damages this high - that process alone can take months and be very stressful. You need to take care of yourself and your wife and try to forget that there is even a lawsuit going on. I know that sounds absurd, but it's the best advice I can give you.
I'd be interested to hear your attorney's response to the "tolling statute" issue being discussed here.
Wishing you peace.
