Niamh Shackleton
A woman who ended up needing both her legs amputated has won a landmark lawsuit over 10 years on from the surgery.
In March 2013, teacher Jessica Powell from Georgia collapsed in her home because of a hormone deficiency disease coupled with a stomach virus.
She was rushed to hospital to receive urgent medical attention at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, where she was then diagnosed with sepsis and shock, before being given drugs to raise her critically low blood pressure.
But doctors allegedly botched her treatment and Jessica - who was 28 years old at the time - ended up needing both of her legs amputated above the knee.
Advert
According to court documents, the doctors caring for Jessica, now 40, gave her a medication overdose, Union-Bulletin reports.
She alleged she was given the drug Vasopressin at a dose two and a half times the usual maximum dose for more than 40 hours.
Ultimately, Jessica went on to sue a group of doctors and the hospital for malpractice and after 12 years of back and forth, a jury came to a verdict on the case on April 23 of this year.
Doctors Joe Morgan, James Palazzolo and Thomas Ungarino, as well as Albany Pulmonary and Critical Care Associates and Albany Vascular Specialist Center, were named in the suit, all of whom denied any wrongdoing.
Apparently it took the jury just 30 minutes to come to the decision to award Jessica $70 million in damages, making it one of the largest awarded medical malpractice cases in Georgia.
Matt Cook, a lead attorney for Jessica, said of the jury's 30 minute-long deliberations: "That should tell you everything you need to know about who was right."
He went on to say: "The verdict came as no surprise because we knew from day one that our client was clearly mistreated by her physicians.
"What drove the result was just the repeated denials and unwillingness to accept responsibility in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing."
Despite the ruling, attorneys for the the doctors and companies named said that they 'respectfully disagree' with the ruling.
"The physicians acted appropriately under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and we respectfully disagree with the jury’s verdict and any notion that these respected physicians failed to meet the standard of care," they said, as per Union-Bulletin.
"Unfortunately, the resulting bilateral above-the-knee amputations, while devastating, were an unavoidable consequence of the life-saving treatment provided."