Morrison Mahoney Partners Joe Desmond and Paige McInnis recently obtained a defense verdict in a wrongful death case after a 3-week trial in Suffolk Superior Court.
Plaintiff alleged that her decedent, a nursing home resident, died as a result of sepsis, alleging negligent care of the nursing home staff in failing to keep a surgical hip wound from becoming infected following a hip replacement surgery. Plaintiff alleged that the plaintiff, who was diagnosed with C-difficile colitis, was neglected over the course of her 12-day stay until she became septic, requiring emergent transfer to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she died two weeks later when the wound was debrided and found to be infected with E-coli. The family alleged that the nursing home was understaffed and was continuously non-responsive to the resident’s call light.
The defense successfully argued that the wound infection and resulting sepsis were caused by bacteria that was introduced at the time of the original hip replacement surgery 10 days prior to the admission to the nursing home. The surgical exploration of the wound after she was hospitalized revealed that there was necrotic muscle beneath the fascia and additional hematoma and signs of infection of the hardware in the hip. Further, the wound cultures revealed a single type of bacteria in the deep tissues, which was inconsistent with the type of contamination plaintiff alleged, which would have presumably included multiple types of bacteria. The defense further argued that there were no signs and symptoms of a superficial infection given the lack of purulent drainage and/or cellulitis to the skin surrounding the surgical incision.
The jury was out for 11 hours over two days before returning a defense verdict.
