Articles Posted in Wrongful Death

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In a confidential settlement, the parties agreed to $1,250,000 for the unfortunate death of a newborn infant. In this case, before the mother’s scheduled Caesarean section, the mother underwent three transplacental amniocenteses to assess her baby’s lung maturity. The purpose of a transplacental amniocentesis is to compare transplacental with non-placental amniocentesis because of possible complications.

Amniocentesis is a frequently used invasive procedure during a woman’s pregnancy guided by ultrasound to remove a sample of amniotic fluid for testing. The procedure requires specialized medical or assistant training. Amniocentesis is a technique for withdrawing amniotic fluid from the uterine cavity using a needle.

The fluid is then tested in a laboratory to determine the health of the unborn fetus. The fluid is composed mostly of fetal substances including urine and secretions. Many times amniocentesis is done to determine whether there are genetic difficulties or to study the maturity of the unborn fetus’s lung maturity. There are risks involved with the transplacental amniocentesis, which occurred here. There was fetal bleeding from an alleged placental abruption that may have been caused by the amniocentesis procedure.

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In most cases of medical malpractice that occur at private institutions, the hospital, its physicians and medical providers could be held liable for injuries caused by choosing not to take an order for proper tests, by not making the correct diagnosis and by not rendering the appropriate medical treatment. But in a hospital such as Cook County Hospital (John Stroger Hospital) or any other public hospital or medical provider, the outcome could be much different. Under the Illinois Tort Immunity Act, a public institution like the John Stroger Hospital/Cook County Hospital could be responsible for injuring a patient only if it were found that it was negligent in treating the patient. However, the hospital would not be held liable if injury or death came upon a patient for the omission of not ordering tests or improperly or incorrectly diagnosing a patient.

Under the Illinois Tort Immunity Act, public entities and their employees are “immunized” from liability in the event of hospital or medical negligence for an act or omission by an employee, physician or other hospital-employed medical provider when the claim is for a misdiagnosis or in choosing not to correctly diagnose an illness or condition that causes injury to a patient.

In one stark example of how this immunization arises is the case of Michigan Avenue National Bank v. Cook County, 191 Ill.2d 493 (2000), where the Illinois Supreme Court weighed in on the case of a young woman who made a number of visits to Cook County Hospital indicating that she had a mass that had developed in her left breast. She returned to the hospital a number of times, but it was not until two years later that the lump was diagnosed as breast cancer.

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During Ms. Doe’s 32nd week of pregnancy, she experienced contractions. Doe went to a nearby hospital where vaginal bleeding, elevated blood pressure and pre-term labor were all noted in her hospital chart. She was under observation for about 36 hours at the hospital before she was discharged to go home.

About 14 hours after discharge, Doe’s water broke. She returned to the hospital where she delivered her daughter by way of an emergency Caesarean section. The child’s Apgar scores were 1 at one minute and 4 at five minutes.

The child was diagnosed as having suffered an asphyxia and spent a number of weeks in the hospital’s intensive care unit. The baby died one year later from pneumonia and complications of severe brain damage suffered at birth.

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A settlement was reached in a case where a newborn, known as “Doe,” was born with a congenital condition in which part of her internal organs developed outside of her body.Right after her birth, Doe underwent a series of surgeries to place those organs inside her body.  After one of the surgeries, Doe began having difficulty breathing.  Her treating doctors placed her on a mechanical ventilator and cardiac machine and also gave her medications, all of which were not successful in returning her oxygen saturations to normal.

Doe then suffered cardiopulmonary arrest, which resulted in permanent brain damage.  Doe died two years later.

Doe’s family sued the hospital and Doe’s treating physicians claiming that the defendants chose not to provide extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) and also failed to timely transfer the child to another hospital. Use of ECMO, a heart and lung machine for babies that circulates blood outside the body, would have permitted Doe’s body to rest and recover, the lawsuit claimed.

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Caden Glynn was born at 26 weeks, 5 days of gestation at Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora, Ill.  His early birth was attributed to his mother’s preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome.  The HELLP syndrome is an acronym for hemolysis, the breaking down of red blood cells, EL for elevated liver enzymes and LP for low platelet count. 

HELLP syndrome is a life-threatening pregnancy complication that is often a variant of preeclampsia.

Caden’s birth weight was only about 1 lb. 12 oz.  After birth he was on a ventilator and feeding was started by a nasogastric tube.  At 44 days, Caden was found to be suffering from necrotizing enterocolitis and was ordered by a treating neurologist to receive nothing by mouth.

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Illinois law prohibits punitive damages awarded in any medical malpractice case.  However, in this medical malpractice case there was a separate count alleging that the University of Chicago Hospitals acted in willful and wanton indifference to the plaintiff’s right to possession of her daughter’s remains.

This lawsuit originated in the Circuit Court of Cook County after Valentina Dearring, the daughter of the plaintiff, Alexandria Drakeford, died at the University of Chicago Hospital on April 10, 2003.  Valentina was just over one month old when she died.  She was born with persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN).  This is a syndrome that is fatal in many infants.  In April 2005, Drakeford filed suit against the University of Chicago Hospitals for medical negligence.

At first, the Drakeford lawsuit alleged only wrongful death and survival based on medical negligence.  However, an amended complaint added a second count alleging willful and wanton interference with the right of possession of the remains of Valentina.

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Disha Mookherjee was in her first pregnancy at age 30.  She was seeing the defendant, OB/Gyn physician Elizabeth Nye, M.D., for her prenatal care. Disha was also a physician — a cardiology fellow at Rush University Medical Center. Because Dr. Nye had concerns regarding low amniotic fluid and abnormally slow fetal growth, Dr. Nye referred Disha to a specialist in maternal/fetal medicine. That doctor recommended induction of labor at 39 weeks gestation.

Dr. Nye followed this recommendation and at 39 weeks, Disha was admitted to Rush for induction on May 5, 2008. 

Labor progressed slowly until it was complete. Disha began pushing at 4:45 p.m. on May 6, 2008. At 5:30 p.m., Dr. Nye used a vacuum extraction device in an attempt to facilitate delivery. There were three “pop-offs” (sudden detachment of the vacuum device from the baby’s head). 

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A baby born at Holy Cross Hospital in June 2008 died three days after being discharged in apparent good health. A lawsuit was filed following the death of this baby because before she was discharged, she had been examined twice by the defendant pediatrician who noted that she had a normal anus and normal genitalia. However, the first two nurses who saw the newborn allegedly chose not to perform a visual inspection of the baby’s anal area, which is a deviation from the standard of care.

Just 16 days after the child’s birth, she was rushed to the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital in cardiac arrest.  It was discovered then that she had been born without an anus and was diagnosed with a congenital defect in which the child had no anus, no vaginal orifice and no urethral orifice and only a single perineal orifice in which she was passing stool and urine. 

An emergency surgery was performed the same day but because of the delay in diagnosis of the defect, the child suffered bowel obstruction, which led to a dead gut and abdominal compartment syndrome. The baby died five hours after the surgery; she was survived by her parents and a sister. The family’s lawsuit claimed that if the newborn’s condition had been correctly diagnosed during her birth admission at Holy Cross, she would have undergone a colostomy within 24-48 hours of birth to prevent the bowel obstruction and that would have been followed by a reconstruction surgery within her first year.

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