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PG County jury awards $19M verdict in med-mal case
PG County jury awards $19M verdict in med-mal case
Listen to this articleKey takeaways:
- Jamie White was awarded nearly $19 million in a medical malpractice verdict in Prince George’s County.
- Delays in diagnosing and operating on White’s dislocated knee caused oxygen deprivation and muscle damage.
- The jury awarded $578,094 for past medical expenses and $3.07 million for future medical expenses.
- University of Maryland Capital Region Health and associated physicians were found liable.
A Prince George’s County jury last week awarded a nearly $19 million verdict to a woman whose left leg was amputated after alleged delays in the treatment of a dislocated knee.
Jamie White was walking to work at a Taco Bell, where she was the manager, one morning in December 2020 when she slipped and fell on an icy sidewalk. She injured her elbow and dislocated her knee, with all of the ligaments tearing. Emergency responders came and took her to a hospital.
“It was the worst pain that I’ve ever felt in my life,” White, who was 23 at the time of the injury, told The Daily Record in an interview Wednesday.
The first surgery didn’t begin until about eight hours after she fell. During that time, she lost circulation below the knee.
The surgery — which ended around 10 p.m., more than 14 hours after the injury — successfully restored blood flow to her lower leg, but only temporarily. Circulation stopped after a couple of hours, and a second surgery didn’t occur until the next morning, another seven hours later. The two prolonged episodes of ischemia, or inadequate blood supply, irreversibly damaged her muscles and nerves.
Over the next eight months, doctors performed at least two dozen surgeries in an effort to save her leg, but were unsuccessful. They finally amputated it in August 2021.
“That’s one of the darkest times that I experienced through all of this,” White said of the period between the injury and the amputation. “It kind of felt like prison. At one point I felt like I wasn’t going to make it out of there.”
She alleged in a medical negligence lawsuit, filed in June 2024 in Prince George’s County Circuit Court, that delays in diagnosing and operating on the knee led to hours of oxygen deprivation to her lower leg, making it necessary to amputate above the joint. She did not allege wrongdoing for any of the care she received after the first two days.
After a monthlong trial, the jury awarded a total of $18.65 million, including $578,094 for past medical expenses and $3.07 million for future medical expenses.
She will receive far less than that. The rest, $15 million, was for noneconomic damages for pain and suffering. That portion is subject to an $830,000 cap, meaning she is set to receive less than $4.5 million.
White said she was emotional when the jury decided in her favor.
“It was just a relief. It felt really good that they actually took the time to listen to the evidence and just rule in our favor,” White said. “This was the last bit of closure that I needed from it all.”
“It’s going to help me and my family out tremendously,” she said.
White was represented by Karen Evans of The Cochran Firm in Washington, D.C. Evans noted that Washington does not cap noneconomic damages.
“If we had been in D.C., this verdict would have been completely recoverable,” Evans said.
Those found liable were the University of Maryland Capital Region Health, Shock Trauma Associates and Maryland Emergency Medicine Network Physicians. They were represented by Mark Thomas Foley of Sasscer, Claggett and Bucher in Upper Marlboro. Foley did not respond to a request for comment.
“UM Capital Region Medical Center, despite the jury’s verdict, is grateful for the opportunity to defend the care its providers rendered to the plaintiff,” Michael Schwartzberg, a spokesperson for the University of Maryland Medical System, stated in an email.
“While we are sensitive to the fact that Ms. White suffered a significant injury, we strongly believe the evidence clearly showed that Ms. White was treated in a very timely manner and the care rendered to her was excellent.”
Surgical Associates and vascular surgeon Kunda Biswas were not found liable. The jury determined that they breached the standard of care, but that the breach was not a “substantial factor” in White’s injury. Trevor Shaw, a shareholder of The Wiggins Law Group, who represented Surgical Associates and Biswas, declined to comment.
Prince George’s County Circuit Judge Todd Steuart presided over the trial.
White is now 29 and lives in Washington, D.C., with her two kids, who are 5 and 8. For the first two years after the amputation, she used a wheelchair. Then she got a prosthetic leg, but it’s been difficult to find a comfortable one despite hundreds of fittings.
“She’s extraordinarily motivated and wants to be mobile,” Evans said. “She’s come out on the other side of this. She’s very optimistic and she wants to work.”
More than five years later, White said, “Now I’m in a place where I don’t have to recover as much. I can really get back to life now.”
