$17.1 Million Verdict After Missed Ectopic Pregnancy Kills Young DC Mother
After trial: Settled on appeal. A jury returned $17,107,000 on April 6, 2022.
A DC Superior Court jury awarded $17.1 million to the three children of Tiffaney Dunbar, 33, who died in February 2017 after a nurse practitioner at MedStar Washington Hospital Center's Women's Wellness Clinic failed to diagnose and disclose an ectopic pregnancy.
What happened
On February 7, 2017, Tiffaney Dunbar, a 33-year-old mother of three, went to the MedStar Women's Wellness Clinic in Washington, DC, reporting more than two weeks of unexplained vaginal bleeding. A nurse practitioner ordered a rapid pregnancy test, which came back positive. The nurse practitioner then performed a bedside transvaginal ultrasound but could not locate the fetus in the uterus.
Rather than examining the fallopian tubes during the same ultrasound, or informing Ms. Dunbar that an ectopic pregnancy was a possibility, the nurse practitioner told her to return for follow-up bloodwork. When Ms. Dunbar missed that appointment, the nurse practitioner called to reschedule but still did not tell her she might have an ectopic pregnancy. At trial, the nurse practitioner testified that she did not want to frighten the patient.
Ten days after the clinic visit, on February 17, 2017, the ectopic pregnancy ruptured. Ms. Dunbar died that day, leaving behind three minor children.
Allan M. Siegel of Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata and Siegel, P.C., along with co-counsel Catherine D. Bertram of Bertram Law Group, PLLC, brought the wrongful-death and survival claims on behalf of the estate. The theory at trial was straightforward: the nurse practitioner had both the opportunity and the training to rule out an ectopic pregnancy during the initial ultrasound, and her failure to do so, compounded by her failure to disclose the risk, was the cause of Ms. Dunbar's death.
On April 6, 2022, the jury found MedStar Washington Hospital Center negligent and returned a verdict of $17,107,000. The breakdown included $15 million to the three children for loss of parental education, guidance, and support; $500,000 for approximately 30 minutes of conscious pain and suffering; and $1,607,000 for lost wages and lost household services. The hospital moved for post-trial relief; the trial court denied every argument in an eleven-page opinion. Washington Hospital Center appealed, bringing the case to the DC Court of Appeals as No. 22-CV-532, where Allan Siegel served as counsel for the appellees. No reduction to the verdict has been reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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