A jury awarded a patient $11 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus on Thursday.
CROWN POINT — A jury awarded a patient $11 million in a medical malpractice lawsuit against Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus on Thursday after the patient required a below-the-knee leg amputation due to negligence of a nurse on staff, according to a news release.
The verdict is incredibly meaningful to the patient, his family and the lawyers who worked on the case after they've waited six years for the case to move through Indiana's medical malpractice court system, according to Cohen & Malad, LLP attorneys Justin Kuhn and Ned Mulligan.
"We've been fighting this battle for a long time," Kuhn said. “The jury sent a message that substandard medical care will not be tolerated in our community,”
In 2015, the patient arrived at the Northlake campus in Gary with complaints of nausea and vomiting, according to Kuhn and Mulligan. When the patient was admitted, a nurse on staff placed an IV into his foot. The placement of the IV caused necrosis, a condition causing the death of body tissue. Shortly after the IV was placed, the patient complained of severe pain in his foot to medical staff.
The hospital discharged the patient on crutches two days after the pain began. Medical staff did not investigate the source of pain in the patient's foot, according to the release. Subsequently, the condition of the man's foot continued to deteriorate.
A few days after the patient was discharged, another hospital determined his foot was dead and would need to be amputated, the release said. Not long after, the patient filed a lawsuit against the hospital.
The trial took approximately two weeks, Mulligan said. The eight-person jury listened to hours of testimony from the patient, medical staff and others. Mulligan said that being a juror is a "thankless job," but his team and the patient are grateful for their work in the trial.
"They put their lives on hold for this," Mulligan said. "The jury is the heartbeat of the judicial system."
The jury ultimately awarded the patient with $11 million. Kuhn and Mulligan said it is slightly more than the amount of money the plaintiff asked for.
"It's hard to value the loss of a leg," Mulligan said. "The jury has to decide what these damages are worth."
For the patient, a former member of the United States Navy and a father of four, he has lost his ability to work as an over-the-road truck driver. He has lost his ability to play soccer, a game he loves, Kuhn said. He has lost the chance to coach his child's soccer team.
The redeeming quality for the patient, however, was the validation of the life-altering mistake the Northlake medical staff made, Kuhn and Mulligan said.
"Our client didn’t want this to happen to anybody else," Mulligan said. "The treatment he got was not okay."