Jaehyun Oh represented an incarcerated 21-year-old who tragically developed Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma due to his facility’s failure to administer proper and timely medical treatment.
While incarcerated at Upstate Correctional Facility, our client began to experience worsening symptoms of shortness of breath, fatigue, a persistent cough, and irregularities on his skin. Despite the fact that our client was evaluated by medical staff 65 times during a five-month period, the nursing staff failed to refer our client for proper evaluation and only provided over-the-counter pain and allergy medication.
Our client’s symptoms continued to worsen, eventually causing him to collapse in the hallway due to shortness of breath. He was taken to the emergency room at an outside hospital, where physicians immediately expressed concern for a lymphoma. After performing additional testing, the hospital diagnosed him with Stage 4 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
The complaint alleged that Upstate Correctional Facility staff were negligent and acted deliberately indifferent to our client’s health and safety by disregarding his continued and worsening symptoms. Had our client received proper valuation including basic diagnostic testing and radiology, medical staff could have made a proper determination about the cause of our client’s symptoms and treated the cancer before it was so severe.