Personal Injury Law

Medical Malpractice and Informed Consent in Maryland: New Maryland Court of Appeals Opinion

Big summer for the Maryland Court of Appeals in personal injury/medical malpractice appeals opinions. The latest in a recent spate of Maryland high court opinions, McQuitty v. Spangler, involves a tragic case of a boy who was born with severe cerebral palsy. Plaintiff?s lawyer argued at trial in Baltimore County that the doctor breached the duty to obtain her informed consent when he failed to inform the mother, who was hospitalized for a partial-placental-abruption, of risks and available alternative treatments related to material changes in her pregnancy: a second partial-placental-abruption, oligohydramnios, and intrauterine growth restriction.

The word abortion makes everyone?s ears perk up. But a partial-placental abortion is the premature separation of a portion of a woman?s placenta from the interior wall of her uterus. Partial-placental abortions vary to degree but the larger the separation, the greater the risk to the unborn child.

The mother in this case faced an awful choice: either take the baby early or assume the risks that come. No one should have to even have the option of making such an awful decision. The informed consent argument in this malpractice case was that material facts were learned about the degree of separation on which a reasonable person could have made a different decision, and these facts allegedly were not communicated by the doctor to the patient.

At trial, which found the doctor did not commit medical malpractice, the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the question of informed consent. In a second trial held two years later, the jury awarded the family over $13 million. Even in a cerebral palsy case, that is a big verdict in a Baltimore Court, a place plaintiffs? lawyers universally believe is a challenging jurisdiction.

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on July 27, 2009 (boomark / email).