Personal Injury Law

$2.2 million penalty issued against football team physician

Recently, an arbitration panel found that a football team doctor was negligent when he performed hip surgery on the plaintiff in May 2007 and awarded the former patient a $2.2 million dollar medical malpractice lawsuit settlement. The plaintiff alleged that the physician lacerated the plaintiff?s femoral artery, vein and nerve, resulting in chronic pain and a limp. The medical malpractice lawsuit was filed in November 2008 and became the latest in a series of legal problems for the team physician.

This was not the first medical malpractice incident that the team physician was involved in. For example, in 2009, the physician reached an undisclosed settlement with a patient who sued him and other healthcare providers after a botched knee replacement surgery. Court documents state that defendants? carelessness required amputation of his right leg. The physician has been sued twenty times since 1998 by patients alleging medical malpractice, personal injury, negligence, or fraud. Sign On San Diego reported that at least eight of those lawsuits have been settled with payouts to the plaintiffs ? many of which were undisclosed.

Additionally, documents show that this team doctor has also had encounters with federal authorities. Last year, federal drug enforcement authorities searched the team doctor?s office and alleged that he had written 108 prescriptions with himself listed as the patient. Such a practice is not legal. The physician responded that he was not at fault, but rather, the allegations stemmed from clerical errors. A Drug Enforcement Administration spokesperson responded that the investigation remains ongoing.

To read more about the malpractice claims against the team doctor, visit Sign On San Diego.

Full post as published by Illinois Injury Lawyer Blog on January 16, 2011 (boomark / email).