Jury Awards Maryland Heights Couple $6.4 Million After Doctor Missed Heart Valve Infection Behind Stroke
After trial: The defense could seek a new trial or appeal after the July 2013 verdict. We found no post-trial ruling or appellate opinion and could not confirm whether the verdict stood or was paid.
Won by Gray Ritter Graham.
A St. Louis County jury awarded Jeffrey and Connie Schneider $6.4 million on July 5, 2013, finding that his physician at SSM DePaul Medical Group failed to follow a known mitral valve prolapse. A heart valve infection went undetected and he suffered a stroke at 53 that paralyzed his right side and damaged his memory. The award included $610,000 to Mrs. Schneider for loss of consortium.
What happened
A St. Louis County jury returned a $6.4 million verdict on July 5, 2013, for Jeffrey Schneider of Maryland Heights and his wife, Connie, finding that his primary care physician, Dr. Joseph Thompson of SSM DePaul Medical Group, failed to follow a heart condition that later led to a disabling stroke. Of the total, $5,794,000 went to Mr. Schneider and $610,000 to Mrs. Schneider for loss of consortium.
Dr. Thompson first saw Mr. Schneider in 1996, noted a heart murmur, and sent him for an echocardiogram that showed mitral valve prolapse, a condition in which a heart valve does not close tightly and blood can flow backward. A second echocardiogram in 2001 confirmed it. The Schneiders' case was that no follow-up echocardiogram was ordered after that, the diagnosis dropped off his problem list after March 2002, and he was never referred to a cardiologist. The condition can lead to a bacterial infection of the valve.
In April 2007, Mr. Schneider became seriously ill with fatigue, weight loss, loss of appetite and abdominal pain. He told Dr. Thompson he felt like he was dying. Dr. Thompson sent him for blood work, an upper endoscopy, a colonoscopy and bone marrow testing, but ordered no examination of his heart and did not refer him to a cardiologist. In May, Mrs. Schneider called and asked that her husband be admitted to a hospital. The suit alleged she was told to wait for the hematology results.
On June 12, 2007, Mr. Schneider, then 53, had an acute stroke caused by a bacterial infection on his heart valve. It left the right side of his body largely paralyzed, with limited use of his hand and foot, difficulty processing words and damage to his short-term memory. He had been a bank examiner and an IT specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and has not been able to work since.
The Schneiders sued in June 2011 and tried the case before Judge Steven H. Goldman. Patrick J. Hagerty and M. Graham Dobbs of Gray, Ritter & Graham represented them. Maureen O. Bryan and Timothy J. Gearin of Armstrong Teasdale defended, arguing that the evidence failed to prove negligence or that any negligence caused the stroke. The jury deliberated about ten hours on July 3, asked to resume after the holiday, and reached its verdict the afternoon of July 5.
Missouri Lawyers Weekly reported the verdict as one of the largest medical malpractice awards in the state. The jury's award was made up of past and future medical and economic losses and noneconomic damages for Mr. Schneider, plus his wife's loss of consortium.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Gray Ritter Graham
All Gray Ritter Graham proven verdicts →A St. Louis jury returned a $4.69 billion verdict against Johnson and Johnson on behalf of 22 women who developed ovarian cancer after years of using the company's talcum powder products, with Thomas K. Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham, P.C. serving on the plaintiff trial team.
Scott Powell of Hare Wynn Newell and Newton served as one of four co-lead class counsel in the $1.51 billion nationwide settlement against Syngenta, recovering losses for hundreds of thousands of U.S. corn growers, grain handlers, and ethanol producers whose market access to China was cut off after the company prematurely commercialized an unapproved GMO corn trait.
Maurice Graham of Gray, Ritter and Graham secured a $55 million class action settlement in Doyle v. Fluor for Herculaneum, Missouri homeowners whose properties were contaminated by lead emissions from the Doe Run smelter.
Tom Neill of Gray, Ritter and Graham represented the family of one victim killed when a 3,000-pound pressurized steam vessel exploded at Loy-Lange Box Company in St. Louis's Soulard neighborhood, launching the tank into a neighboring laundry and killing four people total; consolidated wrongful-death, injury, and property suits settled for more than $47 million.
Related medical malpractice verdicts
A Utah judge entered a $951 million default judgment against Steward Health Care after newly trained nurses, an excessive Pitocin drip, and a delayed C-section at Jordan Valley Medical Center left a newborn permanently brain damaged.
A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
A Clark County jury ordered Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay $524 million after finding the UnitedHealth Group subsidiaries negligently credentialed a gastroenterologist whose unsafe injection practices at his Las Vegas endoscopy clinics caused the largest medically caused hepatitis C outbreak in American history.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.