The court awarded the family of an 81-year-old
Belleville woman $21 million this week in a lawsuit against Oakwood Hospital.
The family claimed the hospital mistakenly operated on her brain in January
2012 when she just needed a simple procedure on her jaw. Bimla Nayyar never recovered from the surgery and
died 60 days later.
Oakwood Hospital is not admitting any wrongdoing and
said it will appeal Wednesday's verdict in Wayne County Circuit Court. In a statement, Oakwood said, "We're very
concerned about how the details of this case have been portrayed." Paula
Rivera-Kerr, spokeswoman for Oakwood Healthcare, said she could not give
further comment.
Oakwood Hospital is part of Oakwood Healthcare and
the newly formed Beaumont Health system of southeast Michigan. Attorney Geoffrey Fieger, representing Nayyar's
family, said in an interview Thursday that he could not recall a worse mix-up
and initial cover-up by a hospital.
"In 37 years of practice, this is the most
shocking abuse I have ever seen," Fieger said.
Nayyar had been admitted to Oakwood Hospital in
Dearborn in January 2012 for a procedure to treat her bilateral jaw
displacement. She was already in precarious health and recovering from a heart
attack she had suffered in October.
But after mixing up her CT scan results with those
of another patient, hospital staff thought that Nayyar had bleeding in her
brain and needed immediate surgery, according to the family's lawsuit.
She was wheeled into an operating room, the lawsuit
said, where five holes were drilled into her head and the right side of her
skull was sawed out and replaced.
"They poked around in her brain, couldn't find
anything and closed her up," Fieger said.
Afterward, a doctor told Nayyar's family that they
found no skull fracture or brain bleeding and that there must have been a
mix-up in the radiology records, the lawsuit says. The hospital did not
disclose to the family the full extent of their error until those details
emerged at trial, Fieger said.
In a sworn affidavit, Oakwood Hospital's chief quality
and patient safety officer described how hospital staff determined that the CT
scan, which they thought had been done on Nayyar, was actually done on a
different patient.
However, the patient safety officer, Sara Atwell,
said this mix-up wasn't the result of a failure on Oakwood's part to develop
and follow proper procedures.
Nayyar never recovered from surgery and lingered on
life support for 60 days. She died in hospice care on March 11, 2012, once she
was taken off a ventilator.
Fieger said he believes the jury's award is the
largest medical negligence award this year in Michigan.
Bloomfield Hills attorney Deborah Gordon, a
prominent trial lawyer who has won several multimillion-dollar verdicts, said
the size of the jury's award in this case is unusual for a patient of advanced
age and likely reflects the strength of Fieger's case.
In hospital death cases, jurors are instructed to
consider the number of years the person might have lived, Gordon said. Cases
that result in large awards often involve babies who were harmed during
delivery.
"In my opinion, for a 81-year-old to get a
$21-million verdict is a hugely successful result," she said. "He
must have presented to jurors a lot of evidence that the pain and suffering was
significant, that the whole event was so wrong."
Another prominent attorney, Keefe Brooks of
Birmingham, said the verdict amount could be cut down substantially as the case
continues. He noted how economic damages in such cases are to be based on the
individual's lost future wages.
"So I'm not sure how there would be much in the
way of economic damages" for someone who is 81, he said. "This
verdict could well be below a million dollars when it's done."
Nayyar was survived by her husband, Ramesh Nayyar,
two daughters, a son and several grandchildren. The family brought her ashes to
her native India, where, in Hindu custom, they were spread at the holy River
Ganges.
Oakwood Hospital is part of Oakwood Healthcare and
the newly formed Beaumont Health system of southeast Michigan.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or
jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JCReindl.
How the jury determined its $21-million award:
• $300,000 for medical and funeral expenses
• $13 million for damages for pain and suffering
• $4.5 million for damages suffered by next of kin.
• $2.2 million for damages to be suffered in future
by next of kin.
(Plus $1 million for interest and other expenses,
according to Fieger)
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