CVN screenshot of plaintiff attorney Chris Carr delivering his opening statement
Dallas, TX - A Texas state court jury heard opening statements Tuesday in a medical malpractice trial accusing a hospital of improperly delaying a woman’s MRI scan and surgery for bleeding around her spine, leaving her permanently paralyzed.
Plaintiffs Jessie and Rich Adams sued Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Flower Mound after Jessie was taken to the emergency room in 2019 with an epidural hematoma following a steroid and pain relief injection in her back at a nearby clinic.
The Adams’ attorney, Chris Carr of Lyons Simmons, told the Dallas County jury that an MRI technicians’s unexplainable delays in completing a scan of Jessie, and then a subsequent delay in alerting other hospital staff to prepare for emergency surgery left Jessie paralyzed for life from the waist down. However the hospital maintains her injuries were caused by the supposed negligence of the clinic doctor who performed the injection.
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Carr did not ask for a specific amount of damages in his opening statement, but he did tell the jury that just the costs for Jessie’s past and future medical care will exceed $2.4 million. He argued hospital staff ignored policies relating to emergency “stat” orders, and that both the results of Jessie’s MRI and her physical condition warranted expedited treatment.
He explained that an epidural hematoma is a rare but known complication of the type of pain injection Jessie received at a local clinic, and that even though an MRI technician testified in a deposition that she saw clear evidence of a hematoma moments after beginning the scan, that it still took hours to actually get Jessie into the operating room.
“They knew an epidural hematoma can cause paralysis,” Carr said. “They knew there should not be a delay in treatment. They knew Jessie was being treated for epidural hematoma, and that surgery is the only treatment, and they knew that stat orders are to be executed immediately.”
Representing Texas Health Presbyterian, Casey Campbell of Schell Cooley Campbell LLP gave a comparatively brief opening statement arguing that emergency room and surgical staff did the best they could to treat Jessie after her clinic doctor caused bleeding around her spine.
He specifically noted that it took two hours after Jessie first reported numbness in her legs after the procedure to call an ambulance to take her to the emergency room from the clinic.
“By the time Mrs. Adams finally made it to the hospital, tragically it was too late for any hope of restoring function,” Campbell said.
The trial before Judge Martin Hoffman is expected to take roughly two weeks to complete, and CVN’s gavel-to-gavel webcast will continue for the duration of the proceedings.
The case is captioned Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Flower Mound, case number DC-20-17490 in Dallas County’s 68th Civil District Court.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com