Fulton County Jury Finds Physician at Fault After Misplaced Femoral Line Led to Leg Amputation

In March 2012, Connie Lockhart was admitted to the emergency room at Northside Hospital-Cherokee after an overdose of blood pressure medication. According to her case, the emergency physician, Dr. Glenn Bloom, placed a central line femoral catheter into an artery in her leg instead of a vein and did not confirm its position. Medication then ran through the line into the artery.

The next morning a nurse noticed the leg was cold and found the misplaced line. Lockhart alleged that Dr. Sachin Lavania, the physician overseeing her care, stopped the medication but did not examine her for about seven hours, and did not order a vascular surgery consult for several days. She was transferred to Northside Hospital-Atlanta, and less than two weeks after her admission her leg was amputated below the knee.

Lockhart sued both physicians and their practice groups. The case went to trial in Fulton County State Court before Judge Jane Morrison in January 2019, with Lloyd Bell and David Schlachter of Bell Law Firm and Darren Summerville of the Summerville Firm representing her. The hospital was not a defendant at trial.

The defense positions differed. Dr. Bloom said the placement met the standard of care and that Lockhart had been combative during the attempt. Dr. Lavania said he ordered the medication stopped as soon as he learned of the misplacement and that the leg could not have been saved by then. Both physicians pointed to nursing staff, arguing that overnight monitoring of her central venous pressure, which Lavania had ordered, was not carried out and would have revealed the problem sooner. Lockhart's vascular surgery expert, Dr. Paul Collier, testified that prompt specialist consultation and the right medication may have saved the leg.

At the close of the evidence, Judge Morrison granted a directed verdict to Dr. Bloom, ruling that Lockhart had not offered legally sufficient expert testimony against him. The claims against Dr. Lavania went to the jury. It returned a verdict of $4.7 million and apportioned fault: 27 percent to Lavania, 3 percent to Lockhart and 70 percent to nonparties, which under Georgia's apportionment statute limited what Lavania owed to his own share. Shortly afterward he settled with Lockhart for $1 million, a policy-limits recovery.

Lockhart appealed the directed verdict for Dr. Bloom. In July 2021 the Georgia Court of Appeals reversed it, in an opinion by Judge John Pipkin. The court held that the trial judge was wrong to find no competent evidence of the standard of care. Lockhart's critical care expert, Dr. Eric Gluck, had testified that the standard for placing a femoral catheter is the same whatever the physician's specialty, and the defense had never objected to his qualifications. Conflicts in the expert testimony, the court said, were for a jury to weigh. The claim against Dr. Bloom was sent back to the trial court.