Medical Malpractice Trial
March 1, 2006
Dick Murphy and Betsy Grover recently obtained a verdict in favor of our client in a medical malpractice trial before Judge Thomas Flanagan in the Circuit Court of Cook County. They represented a head and neck surgeon who performed a biopsy of a tonsillar mass in a patient at Thorek Hospital. The patient bled to death the next morning, witnesses describing the bleed from his nose and mouth as similar to the stream from a fire hose. Plaintiff claimed that the surgeon should have done more to protect the vascular bundle. Murphy and Grover defended on standard of care and claimed that the hemorrhage was due to cancer that had eroded the carotid artery. Plaintiff argued to the jury that our defense was "coincidence". Murphy called it a losing race against cancer. The judge gave an instruction on res ipsa. The hospital settled before the trial. The jury was out a little more than an hour and returned a verdict in favor of both defendants (a family practitioner).
