Six Overdoses of a Blood Thinner Turn a Urinary Tract Infection Into 75 Days in the Hospital and a Wheelchair for Life; Jury Awards $9.3 Million
After trial: The hospital moved to set the verdict aside from the courtroom floor and was told to file written post-trial motions. We found no reported appellate decision in the case and no public report of a reduction, so the verdict is treated as final. The defendant is a hospital owned by Yale New Haven Health, which apologized publicly after the verdict, so payment is treated as institution-backed; the actual payment is not public.
Won by Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, P.C..
Barbara Lathan, a 65-year-old from the Southport section of Fairfield, Connecticut, walked into Bridgeport Hospital on October 3, 2007 to be treated for a urinary tract infection. Staff overdosed her six times with the blood thinner Lovenox; she bled into her abdomen, went into cardiac arrest, was revived and underwent emergency surgery, then contracted MRSA through a central line in her neck, developed an orange-sized abscess and lost part of her shoulder bone to further surgery. She left 75 days later in a hospital bed and never walked again. In October 2013 a Bridgeport jury deliberated about 90 minutes and awarded her $9,279,884.95, and Bridgeport Hospital's owner publicly apologized to her.
What happened
Barbara G. Lathan was 65 and healthy when she was admitted to Bridgeport Hospital in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on October 3, 2007. The reason was routine: a urinary tract infection. While she was there, hospital staff gave her Lovenox, an injectable blood thinner, and gave it to her in the wrong amount six separate times. The overdoses caused her to bleed into her abdomen. A clot formed, and she went into cardiac arrest. She was revived, transfused, and taken into emergency surgery to evacuate the blood from her peritoneal cavity and find and stop the bleeding, the first of a series of operations.
While she was recovering, a central line placed in her neck became the entry point for MRSA, the antibiotic-resistant staph infection. An abscess the size of an orange grew on her neck. Treating it required more surgery and, eventually, the removal of part of her shoulder bone. Lathan, who had walked into the hospital, was discharged 75 days later in a hospital bed. About five years after that, her surgical incision opened and her organs bulged into the skin of her abdomen, leaving her unable to move on her own. Her lawyers described her as wheelchair-bound for the rest of her life.
She sued Bridgeport Hospital for malpractice in Connecticut Superior Court in Bridgeport. Antonio Ponvert III and Kathleen Nastri of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder tried the case before Judge Theodore R. Tyma over about two and a half weeks in October 2013. Their evidence of what had gone wrong, Ponvert said, went largely uncontested by the hospital's lawyers; the fight was over what Lathan's injuries were worth. The plaintiff's case put a number on the medical care she had already needed and the care she would need for the rest of her life, and asked the jury to compensate her pain, suffering and lost ability to enjoy life on top of it.
The jury of four men and two women deliberated about an hour and a half before returning a verdict on a Friday in late October 2013 for $9,279,884.95. One juror said afterward that the panel had reached a fair and equitable verdict and believed justice was served. Moments after it was read, the hospital's lawyer, Bruce Gilpatrick, asked Judge Tyma to throw it out; the judge declined and directed that any post-trial motions be filed in writing.
A spokeswoman for Yale-New Haven Health System, which owns Bridgeport Hospital, sent Hearst Connecticut Newspapers a statement that the hospital deeply regretted the incident and offered its most sincere apologies to Mrs. Lathan, that it respected the judicial process and appreciated the jury's assistance, and that it had adopted new protocols for high-risk drugs shortly after her injury and had since installed an electronic medical record system to help prevent medication errors. The hospital did not say whether it would appeal. The Connecticut Post reported the verdict as one of the largest malpractice awards against a Connecticut hospital, behind a $36.5 million birth-injury verdict against Hartford Hospital in 2005. Ponvert said the award would pay for the care Lathan would need for the rest of her life and acknowledged the pain and suffering the hospital had caused her. Through all of it, he added, she had remained as optimistic a person as he had ever met.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Connecticut Post, Oct. 2013: Oct. 3, 2007 admission for a urinary tract infection; six blood-thinner overdoses, abdominal bleeding, cardiac arrest, emergency surgery, MRSA abscess and removal of part of the shoulder bone; discharge after 75 days; incision reopening five years later; two-and-a-half-week trial before Judge Theodore Tyma; jury of four men and two women deliberating about 90 minutes; $9.2 million verdict; hospital's motion to set aside; Yale-New Haven Health apology; Ponvert and Nastri as trial counsel
- 2.Stamford Advocate, Oct. 2013: same Hearst report of the verdict and the hospital's response
- 3.Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, P.C. (firm)
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