$6.5 Million Verdict Against Physician Who Dismissed Spinal Symptoms as Stress

Craig Allen was thirty years old when he started a new job at the National Science Foundation and moved to Fredericksburg in the summer of 2000. He chose Dr. Donna Gamache of Lee's Hill Medical Associates as his primary care physician and saw her in June for a baseline physical. He told her he had been feeling stressed by recent life changes.

Within weeks, Allen began experiencing numbness and tingling in his hands and feet. When he called the office, Dr. Gamache's staff relayed that the symptoms were attributable to stress and BuSpar, the medication she had recently prescribed. No examination was scheduled. The symptoms worsened. By October 2000, Allen's wife drove him to the emergency room at Mary Washington Hospital, where a neurologist immediately ordered an MRI. The scan showed acute inflammation of Allen's spinal cord, a condition called transverse myelitis. He was transferred to the Medical College of Virginia, where treatment began, but the delay had already taken a toll.

Allen was left with permanent neurological deficits: chronic pain, balance problems, erectile dysfunction, and major depression. The delayed diagnosis and its aftermath contributed to a suicide attempt in April 2002.

Malcolm P. McConnell III and Jason W. Konvicka of Allen Allen Allen and Allen took the case to trial in the Circuit Court for the City of Fredericksburg. The theory was straightforward: Dr. Gamache never examined Allen when he reported neurological symptoms, never referred him to a specialist, and attributed everything to stress without a clinical basis for doing so. A timely workup would have revealed the spinal inflammation at a stage when high-dose steroids could limit the damage.

In April 2003, the jury returned a verdict of $6.5 million against Dr. Gamache and her employer, Mid-Atlantic Health Alliance. At the time, it was reported to be the largest medical malpractice verdict in Virginia history. The circuit court then reduced the award to $1.55 million under Virginia Code Section 8.01-581.15, the state's statutory cap on malpractice damages.

Dr. Gamache appealed. The Supreme Court of Virginia, in its September 2004 opinion, affirmed the finding of negligence but reversed the judgment, holding that the trial court had wrongly excluded certain defense evidence bearing on the cause of Allen's suicide attempt. The court sent the case back for a new trial limited to proximate causation and damages, with the negligence finding binding on retrial. When the case was retried in November 2005, the firm reports the second jury returned a verdict of $1.8 million, ranking among the larger Virginia malpractice verdicts of that year. The original $6.5 million verdict remains the high-water figure the case is remembered by, and it stood at the time as a record for the Fredericksburg circuit.