The VLW Blog

This paper has reported on some high-dollar med-mal cases involving Caesarean sections, but an unpublished 4th Circuit case out of Roanoke offers a new twist. Nickeshia M. Lawrence sued Carilion Roanoke Community Hospital for medical malpractice in failing to perform a Caesarean section when she was giving birth to her son. After a five-day trial, [...]

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Roanoke Circuit Judge Clifford Weckstein will allow a medical malpractice plaintiff to pursue his claim that a Carilion Clinic policy discouraging outside referrals led to medical complications. Weckstein ruled today in a hearing in the case of Ronald Burchett, according to The Roanoke Times . Burchett, represented by Robert Hovis of Annandale, claims Carilion’s reluctance [...]

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State health care organizations wanted a pilot project to look at something other than a hard-nosed “deny and defend” response to a medical error. But the proposal from the Joint Commission on Health Care died this afternoon when the civil subcommittee of the House Courts of Justice Committee voted to carry House Bill 306 over [...]

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There will be no effort to change the medical malpractice cap in this session of the General Assembly. Representatives of healthcare organizations and the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association met with the chairmen of the House and Senate Courts of Justices Committees earlier this week to advise them of the ceasefire. Jack Harris, executive director of [...]

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You really do have to sweat the small stuff when you’re a justice of the Supreme Court of Virginia. We give you three examples from today’s 20-opinion drop. Hutchins v. Talbert. Doctor loses a medical malpractice case, and the trial court enters final judgment on April 25 but suspends the order for 14 days, specifically [...]

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The plaintiffs and defense both score a win with two medical malpractice appeals decided today by the Supreme Court of Virginia. In Graham v. Cook , the court affirmed a defense verdict for an orthopedic surgeon and revisited the issue of when a treating physician’s testimony is considered “factual” versus diagnostic.  Testimony is subject to [...]

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A Spotsylvania County Circuit Court jury awarded $7.5 million Friday to the family of a woman who died from breast cancer. William E. Artz of Arlington, the attorney for the family, contended that a family practitioner and a nurse practitioner were negligent in failing to determine the reason for a lump in the woman’s breast [...]

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A much-sued former surgeon has lost his bid for bankruptcy protection because a judge found he lied to hide his assets. In an eight-month stint at a hospital in suburban Charleston, W.Va., osteopathic spine surgeon John A. King managed to become the target of more than 120 malpractice lawsuits.  In a later practice in his [...]

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In the tussle over hospital internal review documents, a Martinsville Circuit Court has come down on the side of a med-mal plaintiff. Plaintiff Emma Lucille Gravely sued Dr. Richard S. Perren, an emergency medicine doctor, who allegedly discharged her with a diagnosis of “acute chronic low back pain” after she visited a hospital ER with [...]

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A Texas appellate court has upheld $250,000 in sanctions against a hospital that apparently misplaced the heart of a patient who died while being treated for kidney stones. The patient’s family sued Christus St. Catherine Hospital in Katy for malpractice.  In the course of the lawsuit, it developed that the hospital could not locate the [...]

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