His Blood Culture Came Back Positive for a Heart-Valve Infection. Nobody Told His Doctor, and Eight Months Later His Valves Were Destroyed.
After trial: The jury returned a gross verdict of $2,100,000 and reduced it by $315,000 for John Pierce's own comparative share of fault, so $1,785,000 is the figure entered. Maine does not cap noneconomic damages in a non-death injury case, so no statutory reduction applied. No appeal to the Law Court was found and no Law Court opinion in this case surfaced for 2016 through 2018, but that absence was not confirmed against a docket, so treat the figure as probably final rather than proven final. A verdict aggregator and a competing firm's blog attribute this case to a different firm; the Bangor Daily News trial reporting names Berman and Simmons, and contemporaneous news reporting outranks both of those.
Won by Berman & Simmons.
John Pierce was sent home from a Bangor emergency department before his blood cultures came back. They were positive for a bacterium that signals a potentially fatal heart-valve infection. The result never reached his primary care physician, the infection ran untreated for eight months, and it destroyed his heart valves.
What happened
On May 31, 2010 John Pierce, a retired Millinocket mill worker then 66 years old, went to the emergency department at St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor with recurring fevers, shortness of breath and weakness. A physician assistant ordered blood cultures, which is the right call. Pierce was then sent home before the results came back, told to follow up with his primary care physician, Dr. Edward Dunstan, in Millinocket.
The cultures came back positive for viridans streptococci. That organism in the blood is a signal for infective endocarditis, an infection of the heart valves that kills people if it is not treated.
Nobody at the hospital passed that result to Dunstan. Dunstan never asked for it. Pierce kept coming back complaining, and the result sat where it was.
The infection ran untreated for eight months and destroyed his heart valves. He was eventually diagnosed with infective endocarditis and needed emergency open-heart surgery to replace them.
The case was tried in Penobscot County Superior Court at the Penobscot Judicial Center in Bangor before Justice William Anderson, beginning January 19, 2016. The hospital's own lawyer told the jury, "We did make a mistake," while arguing that the doctor and the patient shared the blame for what came after.
On January 26, 2016 the jury returned $2,100,000, itemized as $600,000 in medical expenses, $500,000 for pain and suffering and $1,000,000 for permanent injury. It then attributed a share of fault to Pierce himself and took $315,000 off, leaving $1,785,000.
John and Clara Pierce were represented by Berman and Simmons.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Bangor Daily News, Jan. 26, 2016: the Millinocket couple awarded $1.785 million; the $2.1 million gross verdict and the $315,000 comparative-fault reduction; the itemized $600,000 medical, $500,000 pain and suffering and $1,000,000 permanent injury; the positive viridans streptococci culture that never reached Dr. Dunstan; the hospital counsel's concession; and the statement that the Berman and Simmons law firm represented the Pierces
- 2.Bangor Daily News, Jan. 26, 2016: the Millinocket couple's medical malpractice lawsuit goes to the jury, establishing the single injured plaintiff plus his wife's derivative claim and the Penobscot Judicial Center venue before Justice William Anderson
More proven verdicts from Berman & Simmons
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A jury awarded Robert Giordano $23.1 million after a Northern Light radiologist failed to report a large bony mass compressing his spinal cord, leaving him permanently paralyzed from the chest down.
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Emily Mitchell went to Inland Hospital in Waterville for laparoscopic surgery to remove a benign cyst on her left ovary. The surgeon removed her bladder instead, and pathology on the excised tissue found bladder wall and no ovarian tissue at all. She now lives with a bladder rebuilt from her small intestine. A jury awarded her $15.75 million and her husband $1.25 million.
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