The Cleveland Clinic was sentenced to pay $7.6 million on Tuesday by a Cuyahoga County jury to a Gates Mills woman who was rendered paralyzed following back surgery.
The verdict was delivered by the jury to the Common Pleas Judge after a two-week trial, including allegations of medical misconduct. The Clinic stated in a statement that while it accepted the jury's verdict, it disagreed with the result and was considering its options.
She visited the Clinic for back problems, according to records from the plaintiffs' lawyers. When she was 68 years old, on October 3, 2018, the attending physician operated on her. In court documents, her counsel claimed that the procedure left her paralyzed from the waist down.
Syringomyelia, a disorder in which the spinal cord has a cavity filled with fluid, was present in the lady. The doctor suggested surgery to fix the problem.
Despite having back discomfort, she was quite active, according to the plaintiff's attorneys in court documents. She rode horses, paddled a kayak, hiked, and swam. She even went mountain climbing in Acadia National Park in Maine after setting up her first operation, according to the court documents.
In court documents, the attorneys said that the surgeon and his surgical team committed a number of mistakes, including permitting a foreign item to stay in the patient's back after surgery and neglecting to get an MRI to pinpoint the source of the spine compression. The plaintiff underwent a second operation in February 2019, which, according to the plaintiff's counsel, caused considerably more suffering.
Attorneys for the Clinic emphasized in filings that there were hazards associated with the procedure. They claimed that the plaintiff was treated with the utmost care by the doctor and other medical professionals and that neither their actions nor inactions directly contributed to the harm.
The Cleveland Clinic stated in a statement that the jury rejected the plaintiff's requests for punitive damages and noted that the doctor is a renowned and highly respected physician there.
