Successful Jury Verdict to Family of 23-Year-Old Following Fatal Failures in Emergency Room Care by NYC Health + Hospitals

Attorneys Kevin Lee and Rikki Dascal, trying this case together, obtained a plaintiff’s verdict against NYC Health + Hospitals on behalf of a 23-year-old woman who unnecessarily died due to a hospital’s negligence to properly treat her after she presented to Woodhull Hospital’s Emergency Room.

The jury deliberated for just 1 hour and 44 minutes before returning to the courtroom with a conviction to render a verdict and award substantial compensation.

Although it may seem like everyone has equal access to emergency services in the United States, low-income and minority patients, being less privileged, are more likely to experience major treatment disparities, including longer wait times when prompt care and attention are urgently needed and worse quality of care, according to a 2022 study.

Unfortunately, our client’s story is an example of the deadly impact that professional and social inequalities in health care can have on families unsuspecting families.

This important verdict affirms that all patients deserve equal access to high-quality health care regardless of differences in race, gender, class, or language.

Our Client’s Story: Inequitable Emergency Room Treatment Becomes Fatal

While at home one evening in February of 2020, our client experienced sharp abdominal pain, cramps, and began to vomit. Our client’s symptoms persisted overnight, so our client promptly presented to her nearest emergency room, which was operated by NYC Health + Hospitals, the following morning.

After arriving to the emergency room, our client was admitted to the Hospital and continued to present symptoms of an acute medical emergency. Our client’s labs, which were made available to her treating physicians within a few hours of her arrival, were extreme and suggestive of pancreatitis. However, they were inattentive to these findings and did not actively treat her pancreatitis and diabetic ketoacidosis with therapeutic amounts of insulin and fluid, allowing her condition to severely worsen, causing her wrongful death.

Diabetic ketoacidosis is a life-threatening emergency that causes an individual’s blood to turn into acid due to low insulin. If not treated in a timely manner with insulin and fluids, diabetic ketoacidosis can lead to organ failure and death.

For our client, her diabetic ketoacidosis had already progressed to the point where her pancreas was shutting down, indicating that she needed urgent treatment. However, our client’s doctor was only treating our client’s pancreatitis, without treating the underlying cause of her pancreatitis, which was diabetic ketoacidosis.

Due to the hospital’s oversight, our client’s doctor neglected to administer an insulin drip and failed to increase our client’s fluid intake for 12 hours, allowing our client’s condition to exponentially worsen. During the examination, even the doctor who treated our client admitted that the delay in insulin administration to our client was unacceptable during the trial.

The Jacob Fuchsberg Law Firm obtained qualified experts from Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins Medical School who opined that the 12-hour delay in our client’s treatment led to a significantly decreased chance of survival.

As Kevin Lee stated in his opening statement, “She did not receive the medication she needed. She did not receive the fluid that she needed. And we will contend the evidence will show that she lost a substantial chance at surviving.”

Unfortunately, by the time her doctor finally administered insulin, he administered the incorrect type of insulin to our client, indicating that he was completely ambivalent of the severity of our client’s condition and of how to treat our client.

As a result of the significant and unexplained delay, our client ran out of blood, which caused her lungs to shut down and her body to go into shock. Our client could not be revived and tragically passed away two and a half weeks following her presentation to the hospital.

Before her tragic passing at 23-years-old, our client had a bright future ahead of her with dreams of becoming a social worker. She was very close with members of her church community and lived with her mother and siblings, who have all suffered immensely as a result of her passing.

Everyone Should Be Treated Equally in the Emergency Room

Astonishingly, in defense of the doctor’s negligent behavior and delayed treatment, counsel for New York City Health and Hospitals argued that the emergency room our client presented to was very busy.

However, Kevin Lee and Rikki Dascal argued that the defendants’ argument was not a valid excuse as to why our client wasn’t properly cared for. As Rikki Dascal stated in her closing statement to the jury,

“This trial is your opportunity to hold a hospital in your community to the same standard of care as any other hospital in New York City. Regardless of which hospital our client  walked into, she should have received the same level of care.”