Calhoun County Jury Awards Widow $2 Million Against ER Doctor Who Skipped Ultrasound Before Fatal Bleed
Won by Hare Wynn Newell & Newton.
In August 2019 a Calhoun County jury ordered a former Regional Medical Center emergency physician to pay $2 million to the widow of John Townsend, 60, who bled to death from a ruptured pseudoaneurysm the morning after he was sent home from the ER in 2014. The jury found the doctor responsible for not ordering a color Doppler ultrasound for a softball-sized groin lump. A second physician had settled with the widow before trial.
What happened
In August 2019, a Calhoun County jury in Anniston, Alabama, ordered Dr. Jean Perez, a former emergency physician at Regional Medical Center, to pay $2 million to the widow of John Townsend. Mr. Townsend, 60, died in 2014 of a ruptured pseudoaneurysm, hours after he was sent home from that hospital's emergency room.
On the day he went to the ER in 2014, Mr. Townsend had a painful lump in his right groin, described as softball-sized. Doctors ordered a CT scan, which identified the lump as a fluid collection. The study that could have shown what the lump really was, a color Doppler ultrasound, was not performed. Without it, the swelling was not recognized as a pseudoaneurysm, a weakened and bulging section of an artery that can rupture without warning.
Mr. Townsend was released at 11 p.m. that night. He bled to death the next morning. His widow's case rested on that gap: a lump that imaging had flagged but not explained, and a test that was not ordered.
His widow, Angela Townsend, filed suit in 2016. She named Dr. Perez, Dr. Brian Greene and the hospital as defendants. She later released Regional Medical Center from the case and reached a settlement with Dr. Greene, which left Dr. Perez to face the jury alone. The claim against him was that he did not order the ultrasound that would have diagnosed the condition while Mr. Townsend was still in the department.
The case was tried in Calhoun County Circuit Court in August 2019, with attorney Shay Samples representing Mrs. Townsend. The jury found Dr. Perez responsible and awarded $2 million to the widow.
Mr. Samples said after the verdict that the case was about accountability. 'Dr. Perez refused to accept his professional responsibility for his role in causing John's death,' he said, adding that Mr. Townsend's death was preventable. Mrs. Townsend said she brought the case so that no one else would have to go through what she did.
Dr. Perez no longer worked at Regional Medical Center by the time of trial. The suit had been pending for about three years when the jury returned its verdict, and the settlement with Dr. Greene had been reached before the case went to trial.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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