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In October 2025, Joe Lanni and his team at the Fuchsberg firm successfully negotiated a multimillion-dollar pre-trial settlement in a medical malpractice case about the failure to timely recognize and treat sepsis that resulted in the postoperative death of a 49-year-old Connecticut mom. The patient was the mother of three young daughters all of whom lived at home with her.
In this Connecticut wrongful death case, Joe and his colleagues Rick Margenot, Neal Bhushan, and Brad Zimmerman, paralegal Rhonda Sanchez, and investigator Andrew Lanni proved that surgeons failed to timely recognize the source of the sepsis during two exploratory surgeries and remove infected and necrotic tissue to prevent the patient’s death. Joe demonstrated that intraoperative photos taken during the exploratory surgeries demonstrated that the source of the sepsis was in plain sight. Joe also used autopsy photos and pathology slides to show how and why this unfortunate woman died. The patient is survived by three young daughters. More about this multimillion-dollar case can be found below.
Plaintiff’s medical experts described multiple acts of malpractice that led to the avoidable death of this unfortunate patient. According to the experts, the patient developed a major infectious process of the peri-rectal soft tissues which onset during or immediately after elective anorectal surgery on 8/29/19. Subsequently, the localized infection in the peri-rectal tissues progressed to fulminant and unrelenting sepsis, septic shock, lactic acidosis, multi-organ failure, and death over the next four days. The experts said that the patient died because there was a failure timely and properly diagnose and treat her sepsis.
During the case, Joe and his team relentlessly dug up evidence that the experts relied upon to show the many ways that the defendants failed to timely and properly diagnose and effectively treat the source of the sepsis in the peri-rectal tissues. The evidence uncovered by Joe and his team focused on the radiology and surgery teams assigned to care for the patient.
The radiologists failed to properly recognize that the images on two CT scans were “highly consistent with a massive infectious process …. in the perirectal/perianal/rectosigmoid region”. The surgeons failed to perform the only definitive treatment which could eradicate the source of this patient’s sepsis: extensive surgical excision and debridement of the infected peri-rectal tissues for “adequate source control”. Surgery was necessary to effectively treat the patient’s sepsis since antibiotics could not be effectively delivered to the necrotic, inflamed and infected tissues in the peri-rectal area due to destruction of the circulation. Joe argued that intraoperative photographs taken on 9/2/19 contained images clearly showing that the surgeons overlooked an infected hemorrhagic defect and fistula tract at the operative site. The experts agreed with Joe’s assertions about the intra-op photos.
The state medical examiner’s autopsy report, photographs and autopsy tissue specimens fully confirmed and corroborated both Joe’s arguments and the experts’ opinions in this case. No other source of the sepsis was found in the patient’s body at autopsy aside from the peri-rectal necrotic, inflamed, hemorrhagic and infected abscess tissue.
In the days leading up to the trial, Joe and the defendant hospital’s attorneys negotiated a multimillion-dollar settlement to resolve this tragic case.
