$29 Million Verdict After Salem Hospital Doctors Miss Fatal Aortic Aneurysm

On January 13, 2018, Joseph Brown, a 43-year-old Salem man, arrived at Salem Hospital's emergency room with complaints of chest pain and shortness of breath, along with upper and lower back pain, muscle and body aches, an occasional cough, and one episode of nausea and vomiting. He said his heart felt like it was beating very fast, though his heart rhythm was normal. As his attorney later put it, those were the classic signs of an aortic emergency. The two ER physicians who evaluated him, Dr. Steven Browell and Dr. William Kenyon, tested for and ruled out most of the life-threatening conditions that present that way, but never ordered the CT scan that would have revealed a vascular cause. According to the family's case, the providers reasoned that a man of Brown's age was unlikely to be suffering an aortic aneurysm.

Brown had, in fact, a massive aneurysm at the root of his aorta and a dissection running through the vessel. Had the aneurysm been diagnosed roughly fifteen to twenty hours earlier, he could have undergone emergency surgical intervention and, more likely than not, would have survived. Instead, the dissection went unrecognized and Brown died. He left behind two daughters, who were 18 and 24 years old at the time of trial.

Lubin and Meyer attorney Robert M. Higgins litigated the case on behalf of Brown's family. The plaintiffs argued that Drs. Browell and Kenyon were negligent in failing to order a STAT chest CT, CTA, or MRA and to obtain an emergency cardiothoracic surgery consultation. The defense contested liability, arguing that Brown's presentation was atypical for a rare condition usually seen in older patients and that the standard of care did not require the imaging. The jury found both physicians negligent and their negligence the cause of Brown's death.

After a two-week trial in Newburyport, the Essex Superior Court jury deliberated for about three hours before returning a $29 million verdict. The award was structured as $1 million for Brown's pain and suffering, $9.5 million to each of his two daughters, and roughly $9 million reflecting interest, with much of it paid out over a period of years. No post-verdict reduction has been reported in court or press records. Local news coverage described it at the time as one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts in Massachusetts.