Dubuque Jury Awards $10 Million Over Fatal Aspiration During Anesthesia
After trial: Defense counsel were reported after trial as intending to seek post-trial relief and, failing that, an appeal. No Iowa appellate decision in the case has ever been published, and no appellate docket for it appears in CourtListener or in the Iowa appellate reporters, so we treat the verdict as what stood. We could not confirm from a public record whether the judgment was paid, so collectability is recorded as not public.
Won by Trial Lawyers for Justice.
Richard J. Pellock, 80, had surgery to remove bladder cancer at UnityPoint Health Finley Hospital in Dubuque, Iowa in January 2015, and the operation succeeded. Days later he needed a second procedure for a post-surgical complication, and the nurse anesthetist handling that procedure induced anesthesia without first emptying his stomach despite signs he had a full one. Pellock aspirated, developed aspiration pneumonia and respiratory failure, and died. His widow and son sued the anesthesia group and a Dubuque County jury returned a $10 million verdict against it in September 2017, awarded entirely as loss-of-consortium damages. Defense lawyers were reported as saying they would challenge the verdict, but no Iowa appellate decision in the case has ever been published.
What happened
Richard J. Pellock, 80, was diagnosed with non-metastatic bladder cancer in October 2014. On January 5, 2015, he was admitted to UnityPoint Health Finley Hospital in Dubuque, Iowa, for a robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical cystoprostatectomy with ileal loop urinary diversion. The surgery removed the cancer.
In the days that followed, Pellock developed an ileus and abdominal distention. On January 11, 2015, a general surgeon evaluated him and recommended an exploratory laparotomy to rule out a bowel injury or an anastomotic leak. Before that second procedure he showed nausea, a bloated and distended abdomen, distended bowel loops with air fluid levels, and stool draining from his surgical drain, all signs that his stomach was full and that he was at risk of aspirating during anesthesia.
James Wieters, a certified registered nurse anesthetist employed by Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology, P.C., induced general anesthesia for the second surgery without first passing a nasogastric tube to empty Pellock's stomach. Pellock aspirated during induction. He developed aspiration pneumonia and hypoxic and hypercarbic respiratory failure, and he died that same day, January 11, 2015, at 80.
Pellock's wife, Joann, and his son, Mitchell, sued in Iowa District Court for Dubuque County on November 10, 2015, in case LACV103756. They named Wieters, Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology, the general surgeon and his practice group, the urologist who had performed the cancer surgery, and the hospital. Wieters and Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology answered on November 23, 2015, denying that any negligence had occurred; the other defendants filed their own denials that December.
The case was tried in Dubuque County in September 2017 before Judge Thomas A. Bitter. Nicholas C. Rowley and Dominic Pechota of Trial Lawyers for Justice represented the family. On September 20, 2017, the jury found Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology negligent, and the verdict ran against the anesthesiology group alone, not the other providers named earlier in the case.
The jury's award totaled $10 million, and every dollar of it was loss of consortium: $2 million for Joann Pellock's past loss and $5 million for her future loss, plus $1 million for Mitchell Pellock's past loss and $2 million for his future loss. The verdict included no separate line for Richard Pellock's own pain, suffering, or burial expenses, even though the family had pleaded those claims.
After the trial, defense lawyers were reported as saying they would move to overturn the verdict and appeal if that failed. Nothing came of it that we can find: no Iowa appellate opinion in the case has been published, and the $10 million verdict entered on September 20, 2017 remains the only recorded outcome.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.LexisNexis Jury Verdicts and Settlements, Document of the Week, Sept. 28, 2017: full case facts (October 2014 bladder cancer diagnosis, Jan. 5, 2015 cystoprostatectomy, post-op ileus, Jan. 11, 2015 exploratory laparotomy, aspiration, death the same day at 80), the defendants and their answers, the Sept. 20, 2017 $10,000,000 verdict against Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology before Judge Thomas A. Bitter, and plaintiffs' counsel 'Dominic F. Pechota and Nicholas C. Rowley of Trial Lawyers for Justice'
- 2.Mealey's (LexisNexis legal trade press), Sept. 2017: independent report of the Sept. 20, 2017 $10 million Dubuque County verdict for the wife and son against Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology P.C. and its CRNA, case No. LACV103756
- 3.MedicalMalpracticeHelp.com case write-up (secondary, unbylined): the only report we found that the defense said after trial it would challenge the verdict on appeal
- 4.Iowa State Bar Association civil jury verdict report, Pellock et al. v. Mississippi Valley Anesthesiology, P.C., case LACV103756: Dubuque County, medical malpractice, verdict amount and breakdown, plaintiff's counsel Nick Rowley, defense counsel Jennifer Rinden
More proven verdicts from Trial Lawyers for Justice
All Trial Lawyers for Justice proven verdicts →Carrie DeJongh, 40, of Hull, Iowa, died on June 9, 2015 after receiving iodinated contrast dye for a CT scan at Sioux Center Health, when the physician treating her gave her an antihistamine but did not immediately check her vital signs or give epinephrine. Her family sued Sioux Center Health and Dr. Roy T. Slice for negligence, and both defendants denied the allegations. A Sioux County jury in Orange City returned a $29.5 million verdict on June 13, 2018, covering DeJongh's pain and suffering before her death and loss of consortium for her husband and four children. No appeal, remittitur or reduction has turned up since.
In February 2017, a physician assistant at a UnityPoint urgent care clinic in Des Moines diagnosed Joseph Dudley with the flu despite a negative flu test, sent him home on Tamiflu, and never ordered a complete blood count. Two days later Dudley was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis caused by an undetected heart valve infection, spent eight days in a medically induced coma, and suffered a series of strokes that left him with permanent brain damage, hearing loss, vertigo and nerve damage. A Polk County jury tried the malpractice claim against physician assistant Melanie Choos and Central Iowa Hospital Corp, doing business as UnityPoint Clinic, over a week in November 2022 and returned a $27,000,000 verdict, all of it noneconomic damages. The defense moved for a new trial afterward and UnityPoint said it was weighing an appeal.
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