$2.73 Million Settlement for Woman Left Vegetative After Post-Surgery Heart Drug at Somerset Medical Center

On January 2, 2008, Calreather Graham underwent surgery at Somerset Medical Center to correct complications from two earlier operations there, on December 4 and December 6, 2007. Within an hour or two of coming out of surgery, according to the claims in her case, the attending critical care and pulmonary physician ordered or allowed a 5 mg dose of Lopressor (metoprolol), a beta blocker used to slow an abnormally fast heart rate. It was given by intravenous push at 6:00 pm.

Her heart rate declined steadily over the next half hour. Shortly after 6:30 pm a code blue was called because she had gone into cardiac arrest. The code team revived her, but not before oxygen deprivation caused irreversible anoxic encephalopathy, a form of brain injury. The court's 2013 opinion said she had been in a vegetative state ever since and that her condition had not improved and would not. For the five years before the ruling she lived at home, cared for by her husband, Willie Graham.

The theory of the case was that the drug should not have been given when it was. Her expert, Dr. Daniel Brodie, a pulmonologist and critical care physician, testified that her elevated heart rate at 6:00 pm was natural and compensatory, a response to her condition rather than a problem to be suppressed, and that a beta blocker was the wrong treatment at that moment.

The Grahams sued the doctors involved in her care, the hospital and the nurse who administered the Lopressor. Richard Galex and Matthew A. Schiappa, then of Lomurro, Davison, Eastman & Munoz in Freehold and now with Lomurro Munson, represented the plaintiffs. Immediately before trial, the claims against two doctors, the hospital and the nurse settled for a combined $2,725,000. The court's opinion states that figure as an aggregate and does not break it down by defendant.

That left Dr. Nehal Mehta, the critical care physician, as the only defendant at trial. His lawyer, David C. Donohue, argued that any verdict against him should be reduced by the full amount of the other defendants' settlement. On June 5, 2013, Judge Rea of the Law Division rejected that position in a published opinion, Graham v. Twedell, 432 N.J. Super. 592. Because Dr. Mehta had put on no case against the settling defendants, no evidence of their negligence was before the jury and it would assign them no share of fault, so the court held that Dr. Mehta was not entitled to a credit or apportionment, and no settling co-defendant charge would be given to the jury.

The ruling meant the family kept the settlement proceeds while the claim against Dr. Mehta went to the jury on its own. The opinion does not report how that trial ended.