Jasper County jury awards $825,000 in med-mal case

A Jasper County jury awarded a woman $825,000 after she alleged her surgeon committed malpractice in treating her knee.

Rebecca Adkins went to trial against Midwest Orthopaedic Surgery in Joplin. Her attorney dropped the case against her individual doctor, David Black, just before trial began in October. Black worked for Midwest Orthopaedic.

According to the lawsuit filed by solo practitioner Glenn Gulick, of Joplin, Adkins first went to see Black about her knee in 1996 and had partial knee replacement surgery in April 2002.

But she still had problems, and in September 2003 the doctor performed more surgery, removing the partial knee and completing a full knee replacement.

The suit alleges that before that surgery he took a sample of fluid from her knee and sent it to a lab to test for infection but continued with the surgery without waiting for the lab results to come back. It turned out a couple of days later that the knee had a staph infection, and the knee replacement was removed.

The suit alleged that Adkins had to go through pain and repeated surgeries because of the infection, including procedures in Joplin, at the University of Kansas and at the Mayo Clinic. Medical bills, her suit said, had reached $500,000 when the case was filed in December 2004.

The suit alleged that negligence by the doctor and Midwest Orthopaedic damaged her knee, “requiring multiple painful surgical procedures and resulting in deformity and decreased function in the right knee.” The plaintiff also claimed she lost past and future earnings as a result.

Midwest’s lead attorney, Kent Hyde, of Springfield, said the defense argued that the woman had longstanding knee problems that would have required treatment anyway, and questioned the link between the infection and the later surgeries.

“She had a very problematic knee that needed treatment. She would’ve needed a lot of treatment anyway,” the Hyde, Love & Overby attorney said.

But there was no appeal, and the surgery center paid the judgment in November. Hyde said if the jury was going to rule for the plaintiff, “that’s probably an appropriate verdict.”

• $825,000 jury verdict
• Medical malpractice
• Court: Jasper County Circuit Court
• Case Number/Date: 04CV685683/Oct. 10, 2008
• Judge: David Mouton
• Special Damages: Past economic damages, including medical expenses, $325,000; past noneconomic damages, $250,000; future noneconomic damages, $250,000
• Last Pretrial Demand: $1 million
• Plaintiff’s Experts: Dr. David Bakken, Chicago (internal medicine); Dr. Michael Greer, Chicago (surgical specialties)
• Defendant’s Expert: Dr. Peter Buchert, Columbia (surgical specialties)
• Caption: Rebecca Adkins v. Midwest Orthopedic Surgery Inc.
• Plaintiff’s Attorney: Glenn R. Gulick Jr., Joplin
• Defendant’s Attorneys: Kent Hyde and David Overby, Hyde, Love & Overby, Springfield