In this case, the estate of the deceased brought a, $8 million wrongful death suit claiming a failure to timely diagnose and treat an aortic dissection in a 62-year-old male with a surviving wife who suffered from multiple sclerosis and two adult children. Plaintiff contended that our client, a Lake County medical center by its emergency room and telemetry nurses, deviated from the standard of care by failing to recognize important changes to the plaintiff’s medical condition, including severe hypertension and advancement of chest pain radiating to the back and to notify the co-defendant emergency room physician and internist. The court had previously granted the medical center's motion for summary judgment on apparent agency. Plaintiff claimed that the hospital and physician’s failure to diagnose the aortic dissection and call in a cardiothoracic surgeon to perform surgery caused the death of the plaintiff who had a normal life expectancy. The hospital, represented by Cassiday Schade Partner Marc Benjoya, defended itself through expert nursing testimony supporting the standard of care of its nurses and through a cardiothoracic surgeon who utilized international medical literature and studies of The International Registry of Acute Aortic Dissection (IRAD) to support its defense that the plaintiff’s malperfusion ischemia carried a severe mortality along with his cystic medial degeneration which would have made any lifesaving surgery unsuccessful. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty.
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