Settlement Obtained on Behalf of Woman Who Had to Receive Lung Transplant Due to 6-Year Delayed Diagnosis

Partner Jaehyun Oh represented a 58-year-old wife and mother who had to receive a lung transplant due to a six-year delayed diagnosis. 

Following an abnormal CT scan in 2012, our client was diagnosed with a rare lung disease, however she was never referred to receive a proper pulmonary evaluation to confirm the diagnosis. Over the next six years, our client developed chronic dry cough, throat irritation, and physical impairments, which should have been indicative of a serious problem. Despite numerous abnormal and alarming symptoms that were exponentially worsening her health, our client’s physician failed to order further treatment or even appropriate referral to assess her health. 

Six years later in 2018, our client was finally referred to a pulmonologist. Once she was referred, specialists immediately noticed her rapidly deteriorating condition and performed a proper evaluation including a lung biopsy. As a result of the significantly delayed diagnosis, our client suffered from life threatening pulmonary illnesses, and eventually had to receive a lung transplant as well as numerous additional pulmonary surgeries. Nonetheless, defendants argued that there is no cure to the type of lung disease that our client had, and therefore, earlier diagnosis would not have necessarily made a difference.

In this challenging case, Ms. Oh successfully argued that if our client had received an earlier pulmonary evaluation and biopsy according to protocol, she would have had a substantially better probability of receiving the correct diagnosis when she presented to her physician in 2012. This would have allowed her a substantially higher chance of a better outcome and better quality of life, argued Ms. Oh.