Case #44 [Terrible Expert Opinion]
A 42-year-old woman presented to the ED with right lower quadrant abdominal pain.
A CT scan revealed “uncomplicated appendicitis”.
A general surgeon was consulted and took her to the operating room for appendectomy.
The surgeon elected to perform an open appendectomy. There was no explanation for why he chose this over a laparoscopic appendectomy.
Following the surgery, she was taken to a med-surg hospital bed.
She reported severe abdominal pain, and the surgeon ordered pain medication and went home.
The next day she developed unstable vital signs.
She was taken back to the OR, where a liter of blood was found in her abdomen.
The plaintiff alleges that the surgeon did not wash out her abdomen and inappropriately ligated numerous vessels.
Her condition continued to deteriorate and she was taken back for a third operation.
She ultimately underwent a partial colectomy, suffered numerous abscesses, and has a disfigured abdomen.
The patient contacted an attorney, and a lawsuit was filed.
The attorney hired a doctor who had completed a residency in general surgery.
He examined the patient as part of his assessment of the case.
He wrote the following expert witness opinion.
It is one of the most bizarre opinions I’ve seen:
The lawsuit was filed in December 2019.
The defense raised numerous issues about the lawsuit:
The expert witness was not board-certified in General Surgery.
The doctor was never served notice of the lawsuit. Instead, they served the hospital’s risk management director.
The expert witness opinion did not allege any malpractice by an agent of the hospital, despite the fact that the hospital was named as a defendant.
The lawsuit was dismissed by the judge in February 2021.
MedMalReviewer Opinion:
The expert witness opinion is written in an informal and unprofessional manner. The “expert” clearly has limited expertise and is an extraordinarily poor writer.
The plaintiff’s attorney is a solo practitioner who seems to have no experience with medical malpractice lawsuits. Legal mistakes are seen throughout the lawsuit. The fact that she hired this physician to write an expert opinion, and actually used it in the lawsuit, demonstrates her incompetence.
The patient very well may have had a legitimate malpractice case. An experienced medical malpractice firm would likely have been able to settle this case for at least 6 figures, if not more.
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I'm sorry but that grammar is terrible especially for a lawsuit. Board certification as a Physician Executive and in Medical Quality...what the hell is that and where is the relevance? Citein medscape for mortality figures? Christ. There could have been a real malpractice case here, depending on the actual situation, I am curious to know the full story.
is this a joke? Did some middle school drop out write this?