Case Closed, Episode 4: A Fatal Incision

My name is Mary Ellen Duffy, I’m a partner in the law firm of Duffy & Duffy, and we represent injured parties either through hospitals, doctors, personal injury, otherwise, and we have handled some very significant and impactful cases to me.

One in particular that I can think of is a case where we represented a woman who went into the hospital to give birth to her second child. Unfortunately there was a complication where the bowel of the patient was somehow breached, either nicked or otherwise, and the hospital unfortunately -it’s bad enough that it happened- but they didn’t pick up on the fact that they had done this. So she spent many days with pain and suffering from what ultimately wound up being contents of her bowel spilling into her abdomen. It was allowed to go on for far too long which led to sepsis and death. And unfortunately what was meant to be one of the happiest days of their lives turned into a tragic, tragic day.

The biggest challenges were that the defendants had a fairly good argument that the complaints or the signs and symptoms that she was having were really due to some other condition that she had called sickle cell anemia, which can present with some of the same signs and symptoms. We had to try to distinguish the situation that we were in from what they were going to argue was a reasonable belief that this is what these symptoms would due to.

We did a lot of research, we spoke to a lot of experts, and we put together what I would call a very effective and powerful presentation. Not the least of which is pictures of this woman and how vibrant and what a beautiful person and mother she was and how what occurred took away from these children. And I think when you lay out the facts and present it as strongly as you can, you give them something to think about. With a picture of her, a picture of her children, her interacting well with her daughter, [all of it] added an element to the case that pushed it over the top, I think, for the other side to say “We need to resolve this case.”

We were successful in resolving the case in a settlement for $5.5 million early on in the litigation and we felt that we did a a great justice for this family. Having that money will help the children be able to do the things that their mother would have wanted them to do. It’s a case that stays with me in terms of remembering why we do what we do and how important it is.