Medical Malpractice Case Will County, Joliet IL
Recently awarded the highest settled Medical Malpractice suit in the history of Will County for 9.2 million.
Will County, Il.(a suburb of Chicago) – On January 15, 2015, a Will County woman and her husband settled a medical malpractice lawsuit against a local hospital and surgical group, for a Will County record high settlement of $9.2 million. She filed suit because surgical complications after weight loss surgery in November, 2010, led to above-the-knee amputation of both of her legs. The surgeon was an employee of the surgical group and an agent of a local hospital. Based upon claims of agency the hospital participated in the settlement. There were no other significant claims against the hospital. A local hematologist also contributed to the settlement.
On November, 10, 2010, a local woman underwent a weight loss procedure called a gastric sleeve surgery, which involved removal of approximately 70% of her stomach. She had a preexisting blood clotting disorder, and for the previous ten years had been required to take a blood thinner called Coumadin every day. The blood thinner had to be discontinued just before surgery, with the expectation that it would be restarted in a timely manner after the operation. Unfortunately, she suffered a bleeding complication after surgery, and the surgeon decided to delay the restarting of those blood thinners. Due to the absence of an anticoagulation bridging plan, blood thinners were never restarted and after two weeks, she developed massive blood clots in her legs that ultimately resulted in the complete loss of blood circulation to her legs. Because circulation could not be restored, both of her legs were amputated above the knees on November 26, 2010.
A lawsuit was filed in Will County by Laird Ozmon of the Law Offices of Laird M. Ozmon, Ltd. alleging that her doctor failed to sufficiently educate her that due to her hyper coagulable condition, she should have had a less invasive and risky weight loss surgery called a lap band procedure, failed to properly manager her anticoagulants before surgery, failed to restart her anticoagulants when it was safe to do so, and failed to respond in a timely manner when she developed extensive blood clots.
The plaintiffs were represented by Laird Ozmon of Laird M. Ozmon, Ltd, (Joliet) and Mark McNabola, Ted Jennings and Ruth Degnan of McNabola Law Group, P.C. (Chicago) who were subsequently added as trial counsel. Defendant hospital was represented by Brian Fetzer of Johnson & Bell, Ltd. (Chicago); defendant surgeon and medical group were represented by Troy Lundquist of Langhenry, Gillen, Lundquist & Johnson, LLC (Joliet); and the hematologist and medical group were represented by Martha Swatek of Swatek Law Group, Ltd. (Geneva).