Clausen Miller Obtains Victory In Wrongful Death Case
January 17, 2012
On December 16, 2011, Dominick W. Savaiano and Anthony P. Ulm obtained a defense verdict for their client in a two-week trial in northern Illinois in a psychiatric/medical malpractice, wrongful death case. The case involved a 43-year-old mother of three who was brought to the local emergency room by ambulance after voicing suicidal thoughts to her family. Despite the fact that the ER physician (our client), a social worker, and a psychiatrist who was consulted by telephone all felt that the patient should have been hospitalized, they concluded that they could not admit her involuntarily nor persuade her to enter the psychiatric ward on her own. She was discharged with the instructions to see the psychiatrist on the following day (which she failed to do). She committed suicide three days later.
The case involved numerous legal issues, and Dom and Tony were assisted by Lindsay Dates and the firm's Appellate Practice Group. We were successful in getting dismissed a claim frequently made in suicide cases, i.e., that the estate should be able to recoup the decedent's emotional pain and suffering from the time of treatment until the time of her death. We argued that Illinois law did not provide for such damages without contemporaneous physical harm. We also successfully fought off a claim by plaintiff that he was entitled to a missing witness instruction (instructing the jury that they could make a negative inference toward our client) for abandoning one of our experts at trial, and we were able to keep out a jury instruction allowing the jury to consider whether the decedent had a diminshed mental capacity at the time of her suicide, thus eliminating a comparative negligence claim.
The result was especially gratifying because it was a Christmas jury and the plaintiff's attorney has an excellent reputation and has obtained seven- and eight-figure verdicts for his clients at trial and in settlement.
