Doctor Infected With HIV by Hospital Needle Settles Negligence Suit for $1.35 Million
After trial: The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation paid the $1.35 million settlement, and as part of it Prego discontinued the case against Dr. Fogel and Dr. Landesman. No defendant acknowledged negligence. The case settled before summations, so there was no verdict and no appeal. The figure became public only because Justice Bernstein lifted a gag order after the New York Post petitioned for disclosure.
Dr. Veronica Prego, a medical intern at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, pricked her finger in January 1983 on a needle that had been used minutes earlier to draw blood from a patient with AIDS, and she later tested positive for HIV. She sued the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and two physicians in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, saying the contaminated needle had been left in the patient's bedding instead of a disposal box. The hospital corporation denied negligence and its lawyer suggested at trial that Prego had drawn the blood herself. On the eve of summations in March 1990, after a nine-week trial, the corporation paid $1.35 million to settle, a figure Justice Aaron Bernstein disclosed only after the New York Post petitioned to lift a gag order. Susan Karten was one of the lawyers who tried the case for Prego.
What happened
On January 12, 1983, Dr. Veronica Prego, a medical intern at Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, pricked her finger on a hypodermic needle that had been used minutes earlier to draw blood from a patient with AIDS. Prego said the needle had been left among gauze and wrappers on the patient's bed rather than dropped into a disposal box, and that her supervising intern, Dr. Joyce Fogel, had drawn the blood and left the needle there. Prego pricked herself while clearing the material away. She later tested positive for HIV and went on to develop AIDS.
Prego sued the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, which runs Kings County Hospital, along with Dr. Fogel and Dr. Sheldon Landesman, the physician who ran a study of HIV among health care workers that Prego had taken part in. The claim against the corporation was negligence: no sharps box at the bedside and a contaminated needle left in a patient's bedding. Separately, Prego claimed Landesman had broken the confidentiality he promised her when he told her by telephone that her test was positive and her condition became known to others around her.
The case was tried before Justice Aaron Bernstein in state Supreme Court in Brooklyn, with a six-member jury weighing the negligence claim. The Health and Hospitals Corporation said before trial that the facts would show there was no negligence and that Fogel had stated she was not present when the blood was drawn. Cross-examining Prego, the corporation's lawyer, Stanley Friedman, suggested she might have drawn the patient's blood herself. Prego, then 32 and born in Argentina, answered that she had not, and described in her own testimony the pain and depression of her illness and the private practice she had hoped to open. In January 1990 her treating physician, Dr. Gerald Friedland, testified that it was impossible to predict but possible her life expectancy was a year or shorter, a prognosis Prego said she was hearing put in those terms for the first time as she sat in the courtroom.
The trial ran nine weeks. As it neared summations, with the jury about to begin deliberating, Prego settled and discontinued the case. Justice Bernstein disclosed the terms the following day, after the New York Post petitioned the court to lift a gag order: the Health and Hospitals Corporation paid $1.35 million, and Prego dropped the suit against Fogel and Landesman as part of the deal. None of the defendants acknowledged negligence. Afterward most of the jurors said they had been leaning toward Prego. One of them, a telephone company employee, told reporters he would have voted for her because the testimony from hospital officials left him feeling there had been negligence at Kings County. Prego said she was happy with the outcome and wanted to put the case behind her.
Susan Karten was one of the lawyers who tried the case for Prego and conducted her direct examination. Liability was contested to the end, and the settlement ended the trial before the jury could rule, so there was no verdict and nothing to appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.UPI, March 9, 1990: the $1.35 million paid by the Health and Hospitals Corporation, Justice Aaron Bernstein lifting the gag order at the New York Post's request, the nine-week trial before a six-member jury in Brooklyn, the discontinuance against Dr. Fogel and Dr. Landesman, Prego's age of 32 in 1990, and the jurors' comments.
- 2.New York Times News Service report by Arnold H. Lubasch, published January 12, 1990: names Susan Karten as one of Prego's lawyers conducting her direct examination, Justice Aaron Bernstein presiding in Brooklyn, defense lawyer Stanley Friedman's suggestion that Prego drew the blood herself, the Health and Hospitals Corporation's position that there was no negligence and that Fogel was not present, and the confidentiality claim against Dr. Landesman.
- 3.Roanoke Times (New York Times wire report), March 9, 1990: the settlement was to be paid by the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation, none of the participants acknowledged negligence, and four jurors indicated they had been leaning toward Prego.
- 4.Seattle Times archive, January 19, 1990: Dr. Gerald Friedland's trial testimony that Prego's life expectancy might be a year or shorter, the January 12, 1983 needle stick, and her status as an unpaid trainee at the time.
- 5.UPI, January 22, 1990: the confidentiality claim against Dr. Sheldon Landesman arising from the study of HIV among health care workers, and the defense response.
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All Susan M. Karten & Associates, LLP proven verdicts →In the summer of 2015, after an eleven month trial over the May 30, 2008 tower crane collapse on East 91st Street in Manhattan, a jury held crane owner James Lomma, New York Crane & Equipment Corp., and J.F. Lomma, Inc. liable for the deaths of construction worker Ramadan Kurtaj, 27, and crane operator Donald Leo, 30. The awards against the Lomma defendants for Kurtaj's estate came to $55.5 million: $7.5 million for preimpact terror, $24 million for conscious pain and suffering, and $24 million in punitive damages, part of roughly $96 million in combined verdicts for the two families. Susan M. Karten of Susan M. Karten & Associates was trial counsel for the Kurtaj family. The honest frame: on September 12, 2017 the Appellate Division, First Department found the awards excessive and reduced the Kurtaj figures to $2 million, $7.5 million, and $9.5 million, a total of $19 million, and the Leo figures to $16 million, cutting the combined awards to about $35 million.
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