The second of eight wrongful death cases involving a former Veterans Health Care System of the Ozarks pathologist's missed diagnoses resulted in a $3.65 million settlement one day after the first family to bring their case to trial received $4.7 million.
According to court records, a settlement was reached and the case was dismissed following the plaintiff's death. The settlement amount was not disclosed in the dismissal. The amount was confirmed by an attorney for the plaintiffs. He stated that the remaining six cases have not yet been resolved.
After a two-day trial, a federal district judge awarded the survivors $4.7 million. The previous lawsuit's plaintiff was an Army veteran whose cancer went untreated for more than six years due to a missed diagnosis at the VA facility. The award to the family was a significant factor in the US reconsidering its position on the current cases and the remaining cases.
The plaintiff's attorney stated that the plaintiff's son can now put this matter behind him and know that his perseverance resulted in justice for his war hero father's preventable death at the hands of the VA.
Both cases involve a former chief pathologist at the Fayetteville VA hospital. In both cases and others, the pathologist missed the cancer diagnosis. In both of these cases, the defendant went years without receiving cancer treatment. According to the lawsuit, the pathologist in the current case falsified the plaintiff's medical records by claiming that a second pathologist at Fayetteville hospital agreed with him.
The pathologist was suspended following an arrest in Fayetteville on March 1, 2018, for driving under the influence. He was later fired after a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs investigation determined that he had worked while intoxicated for years and had an error rate that was more than 12 times the normal for pathology. According to the lawsuits, both plaintiffs died as a result.
In June 2020, the defendant pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter for missed diagnoses. He was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison in January 2021.
In 2016, the defendant was discovered drunk on the job for the first time. According to court documents, a review of some of his test results at the time revealed no serious errors. He returned to work after completing a rehabilitation programme and agreeing to submit to random alcohol tests. He then used his medical training to obtain and use 2m-2b, an intoxicating drug that cannot be detected by traditional blood or urine tests for alcohol. After returning to work, he passed 42 drug tests in two years.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has begun reexamining all 33,902 cases on which the defendant worked from 2005 to 2017. The investigation began following the DUI arrests. Pathologists examining the original tissue samples discovered 3,029 errors, 30 of which were serious enough to have long-term health consequences.
