Personal Injury Attorneys in Alaska

Phyllis Rivers, pregnant, was treated at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. Her doctors noted at least three indicators of infective endocarditis, rejected that diagnosis in favor of pregnancy-induced vasculitis, stopped her antibiotics after four days and sent her home. Untreated, the infection caused a stroke that left her paralyzed. After a bench trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act the court entered a $22,000,000 judgment against the United States and found the doctors reckless, which lifted Alaska's $400,000 malpractice cap. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 2018.

In 2011 Mardi Strong, a construction worker and a member of the Yakama Nation, went to the Alaska Native Medical Center's emergency room and family clinic three separate times with worsening cellulitis and early sepsis. Staff diagnosed shingles each time and sent her home. She returned in septic shock, dry gangrene set in, and all four of her limbs were amputated. Her Federal Tort Claims Act case was tried in March 2018 and settled for $21,100,000 while the parties waited for the judge's decision.

On July 1, 2018 Aaron Thomas Smith of Eagle River died on the Seward Highway when Alaska State Trooper Richard Chambers, spotting a speeding car going the other way, braked hard and pulled a U-turn across the highway in front of him. Troopers first blamed vehicles following too closely. In depositions, department officials conceded U-turn training was optional at the academy and Chambers had never had any in the field. The state's own settlement memo concluded it was liable. The State of Alaska settled with his widow for $3,000,000 in 2023.

In January 2016 Dietrich Mael heard the boiler in his family's Chefornak home whistling and went to check it. It exploded, threw him against a wall, sprayed him with scalding water and glycol and knocked him out. The home's owner, the AVCP Regional Housing Authority, had promised in the family's lease-purchase contract to inspect the boiler and had not; the pressure relief valve was rusted through. A Bethel jury put all the fault on the authority and awarded $3,427,000. Alaska's cap cut the noneconomic portion to $1,000,000, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed $2,847,000 in 2022.