Firm Settles Two Significant Wrongful Death Cases

This month, Silverman Thompson attorneys Andrew G. Slutkin and Jamison G. White settled two Maryland medical malpractice / wrongful death cases for substantial confidential recoveries. The first case involved a 58 year old woman who suffered a massive stroke and then death after the woman’s gastroenterologist negligently took her off the blood-thinner Coumadin for 12 days (5 days before the procedure and 7 days after the procedure surrounding a colonoscopy. The woman had been on Coumadin for decades due to mitral valve disease and atrial fibrillation. Taking her off Coumadin for such a long period of time violated a published guideline by the American Society For Gastrointestinal Endoscopy to which the defendant gastroenterologist belonged.

The second case involved a 63 year old woman who was admitted to a Harford County hospital after she was found unresponsive at home. Upon admission, the defendant physician who was in charge of her admission unintentionally issued an order that doubled the dose of a narcotic pain medication that she had been taking for chronic pain, causing her to suffer severe respiratory distress. Then, the defendant failed to properly investigate and/or treat abnormal blood gas results that demonstrated that the woman was suffering from severe respiratory distress. The woman was discharged on the third day of admission, went home, when to sleep and never woke up. A private autopsy (which the family obtained after the medical examiner refused to investigate), supported the plaintiffs’ claims of medical malpractice and wrongful death.