Virginia Lawyers Weekly

The maker of a solution used in heart surgery paid more than $6 million to settle six cases in which a patients died after surgery at Mary Washington Hospital near Fredericksburg in 2004 and 2005.

Central Admixture Pharmacy Services, its parent company, B. Braun Medical, and the families of the patients attempted to keep the settlements secret.

However, the publishers of the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star and the Richmond Times-Dispatch filed suit, contending that state law requires settlement amounts in wrongful death cases to be open to the public.

The trial judge sealed the settlements at the request of the parties but agreed with the newspapers that state law required the agreements to be public. She stayed disclosure until the case could be appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia.

The high court ruled in September that the settlements must be public, and they were released last week after the Supreme Court entered the mandate in the case.

In addition to payments to the families of the patients who died, the company settled three cases in which the patient alleged injuries from the solution but survived. One case is still pending.

State law requires court approval of settlements only in wrongful death cases or in cases in which payments are made to minors or someone under some other legal disability, so the settlement amounts in the cases in which the patients survived have not been disclosed.

CAPS provided a solution called cardioplegia, which is injected at three stages of bypass surgery to stop, maintain and revive the heart. Tests showed that the solution was contaminated by bacteria.

Tests at the lab found bacteria and unsterile conditions. Under pressure from the FDA, the company shut down the lab and recalled all injectable products – not just cardioplegia – that hospitals had on hand in September 2005. The lab subsequently reopened.

The Virginia Department of Health concluded that CAPS was “the most likely source of the cluster of [systemic inflammatory response syndrome] observed” at Mary Washington.

CAPS disputed that conclusion and the settlement papers contain a denial of liability.

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