Attorneys Daniel Martz and Maria Granaudo Gesty obtained a unanimous defense verdict in a medical malpractice/wrongful death case tried for more than 8 days in the Kent County Superior Court in Dover, Delaware.
Martz and Granaudo Gesty represented an emergency medicine physician who was working as a locum tenans at a medical center, supervising a physician assistant who saw a patient for an acute low back injury. A day after discharge, the patient was found deceased, and an autopsy revealed that an IVC filter had perforated the aorta, leading to an acute bleeding event. The claim was that the physician assistant should have ordered a CTA with contrast, rather than just a non-contrast CT scan, to evaluate the complaints and that the physician should have caught that alleged omission upon review and signing of the chart after the patient was discharged. Defense experts testified that the diagnosis of acute low back strain was appropriate, the complication that occurred with the filter was extremely rare and unforeseeable, and the non-contrast CT was adequate to image the filter. The team was supported by Carol Cowhey, Angel Cervella, and Jennifer Rush-Schwadron.