The Patient Becomes the Plaintiff

In many lawsuits that result in the award of damages for malpractice, the fault clearly lies with the physician or the hospital. In others, doctors have unfairly been found guilty of malpractice when patients developed unexpected complications after conscientious, sound treatment. Whatever the case, the number of suits--and the amounts awarded --have been increasing astronomically.

> During a schoolyard fight in San Rafael, Calif., in 1970, Kelly Niles, 11, was hit on the right side of his head and taken by his father to the emergency room of San Francisco's Mt. Zion Hospital. Though no evidence of a skull fracture was found on X rays, Kelly was perspiring heavily, and he was pale and groggy. Still, a staff pediatrician sent him home. Later that evening, Kelly's father grew concerned and returned him to the hospital. This time doctors decided to operate and removed a large blood clot pressing on Kelly's brain. Had surgery been performed earlier, Kelly might well have made a good recovery. But the delay resulted in permanent brain damage, leaving him mute and paralyzed from the neck down. The boy's family sued the hospital, the pediatrician and the school district for negligence, and was awarded $4,025,000 in damages, one of the largest malpractice settlements on record.

> Malcolm Tweed, 59, a casketmaker from Chula Vista, Calif., visited a general practioner in 1972, complaining about a pain in his right shoulder. The doctor diagnosed his problem as arthritis, ignored a suggestion by a consulting radiologist that "a tumor must also be considered," and gave him 41 costly shots of a steroid drug over a three-month period. As the pain in his shoulder intensified, Tweed consulted an orthopedic surgeon, who X-rayed him and misdiagnosed the problem. Eight months later, an associate of the orthopedic surgeon happened to see Tweed's X rays and identified the illness as bone cancer. If the malignancy had been spotted in its early stages, Tweed might have been saved; his illness is now "terminal." He sued both the G.P. and the surgeon, and his lawyer settled out of court for $300,000.

> When he was 18 and in the Merchant Marine, William Fertig of Franklinville, N.J., entered the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital on New York City's Staten Island to have an eye defect corrected. But before surgery, Fertig suffered a rare reaction to a widely used general anesthetic. His body temperature rose and remained at 108DEG, long enough to cause extensive brain damage. As a result, Fertig, now 24, is blind, cannot speak, and is paralyzed from the neck down. After bringing suit against the Federal Government, charging that doctors at the hospital had not monitored the administration of the anesthesia and that they had done nothing to control the violent reaction, Fertig and his family were awarded a $1 million settlement.

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