PARIS – A jury on Friday rejected a claim by a woman who alleged she wasn’t properly informed of a suspicious mammogram 10 months before she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

The verdict came after two weeks of testimony by a parade of medical experts in one of the longest August trials in recent memory in Oxford County Superior Court.

The nine-member panel ruled 6-3 in favor of Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway and its radiologist, Dr. Edwin Krajci, along with Dr. Francis Kieliszek of Oxford Hills Internal Medicine. All three were named in the lawsuit brought by Judith Mitchell-Layton, who maintains the cancer could have been treated a lot less invasively had it been discovered sooner.

“Obviously we’re very disappointed,” said Alison Denham of the Portland law firm of Douglas Denham Buccina and Ernst, which represented Mitchell-Layton. The jury deliberated for five hours before returning its verdict just before 5 p.m.

During closing arguments Friday, Mitchell-Layton’s lawyer, Deborah Buccina, reminded jurors of expert opinions they heard indicating that Krajci failed to properly diagnose results of Mitchell-Layton’s October 1999 mammogram.

He should have seen a mass or tumor in the results, Buccina said, but interpreted the results as uncertain because of inadequate compression on the breast.

Kieliszak, in turn, dropped the ball, Buccina said, in not making it clear to Mitchell-Layton that she needed to be retested because the results were suspicious.

Mitchell-Layton said she also never received a letter about the results as required under the Mammography Quality Standards Act. Buccina said her client would have responded immediately if she had gotten such a letter.

“Judy Mitchell does not have a death wish,” Buccina said. Now Mitchell-Layton has lost her right breast and has a decreased life expectancy, said Buccina, and, “None of this would have had to happen if she had been diagnosed properly in 1999.”

But Krajci lawyer Thomas Coffin reminded jurors of testimony by Dr. James Connolly, a professor of oncology at Harvard Medical School. Connolly said Mitchell-Layton’s cancer existed even before the 1999 mammogram – and that 10 months wouldn’t have made a significant difference in the treatment or outcome in her case.

He said Kieliszak’s office told Mitchell-Layton she needed to follow up the 1999 test with an ultrasound, but that she declined.

Coffin portrayed Mitchell-Layton as a person unwilling to accept responsibility for her own inaction. “She lashed out at these defendants for her perceived misfortune,” he said. “They would have you believe that there somehow was this multipronged conspiracy to fabricate records” in the case, he said.

“Make no mistake, these defendants have been harmed by her accusations. This is a small community hospital,” said Coffin. He pointed out that a malpractice panel that investigated Mitchell-Layton’s concerns found no failures on the part of either doctor or the hospital in following the proper standards of care in her case.

Kieliszak lawyer Mark Lavoie went even further than Coffin.

“If you think these doctors are fabricating documents and lying, by all means, find against them,” Lavoie said. He portrayed Mitchell-Layton as a woman who was dealing with business and personal problems in October of 1999 and had “too much on her plate” to deal with a mammogram retesting.

He said she acknowledged, when asked why she failed to get a mammogram in 1997, that “time slips away.” He asked why Mitchell-Layton continued to use Kieliszak as her doctor “until he said I can’t treat you anymore because you’ve sued me.”