Trial Lawyers for Justice won a significant medical malpractice victory in Iowa for an 80-year-old man who died during surgery.
The firm’s founding partner Nick Rowley represented the family of the plaintiff Mitchell Pellock, whose complications started with botched anesthesia during a metastatic cancer surgery following the removal of his bladder. This surgery would have saved the patient’s life, Rowley argued, but the negligent induction of anesthesia caused him to aspirate stomach contents into his lungs. He died later that day of secondary drowning. The anesthesiology provider failed to recognize that Pellock had just been fed an hour earlier and had a full stomach.
The jury unanimously found the medical provider negligent in its actions and awarded the plaintiff $10 million to the his wife and daughter.
“Even though life expectancy instructions only gave us 7 ½ years of damages,” Rowley said, “the jury found this family lost an important and valuable life, experienced extreme hardship, and that the medical professionals were negligent and wrong in the care of an 80 year old man who had finally beat cancer.”
Additional firm lawyers who worked on the case were Rodney Ritner, Dominic Pechota, and Grayson Yoder.
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