FARMINGTON – A medical malpractice pre-litigation screening panel ruled Friday that Franklin Memorial Hospital’s negligence in its care of a 43-year-old man caused pain and suffering, advancing the case to trial.
The man, Wayne Poppe, was hospitalized because of an abscess in his groin in October 2000 and required three surgeries to clean and drain the area. He died the day after the last surgery of an embolism in his leg.
The pre-litigation screening panel, made up of two lawyers and a health care professional, is required in all medical malpractice lawsuits to hear initial complaints to limit frivolous cases from reaching court dockets.
The opinion of the panel, according to state law, is not confidential and cannot be used in subsequent litigation unless the decision is unanimous in favor of either party.
In this case, the decision that the hospital’s negligence caused the pain and suffering was unanimous and can be used in a lawsuit against the hospital.
Poppe’s widow, Deborah Poppe of Sloatsburg, N.Y., has filed suit alleging the hospital’s nursing staff did not properly assess her husband’s condition after surgery.
According to Sumner Lipman, Poppe’s attorney, nurses refused to call Wayne Poppe’s doctor, Dr. David Dixon of Livermore Falls, though Deborah Poppe and her husband requested they do so several times. The nurses, he told the judge, told them the doctor did not want to be awakened at 3 or 4 a.m. and “by 8 a.m., it was too late.”
Poppe died later that day.
Lipman also said the nurses, Rebecca Thomas and Nancy Simpson, claim there was no change in Poppe’s leg but that they never checked it.
The hospital’s attorney, George Schelling of Gross, Minsky & Mogul in Bangor, said the medical malpractice panel “ran amok” in its decision-making.
A majority of the panel voted that Poppe did not die as a result of the hospital’s negligence, he argued, and that the nurses’ deviation from a standard of care did not cause Poppe’s death, as his widow’s suit also alleges. Justice Joseph Jabar pointed out that the panel did, though, find the nurses’ and the hospital’s negligence caused the pain, suffering and injury. It doesn’t matter if it’s wrongful death or pain and suffering; there was damage, he said.
Jabar has scheduled a trial date on the malpractice case for the end of February.
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