Allison Wall

The Victims of Senate Bill 3

Let’s face it, the media loves to feature stories about people who take on big business in court and win big bucks. But we often hear very little about the reasons juries recommend such large judgments against careless businesses.

A great example of this is the case against McDonald’s for selling coffee that was as hot as 190 degrees, over a ten-year period, causing serious burns to over 700 people. Newspaper and television reporters across the country jumped at the story when the jury decided that McDonald’s should pay $2.7 million in punitive damages, and should compensate one customer, who sustained third degree burns, $160,000.

What most people don’t know is that the judge reduced the $2.7 million in punitive damages to $480,000. People don’t know that, because, largely, the media didn’t report it. Even fewer folks know that the plaintiff offered to settle the case for $20,000, just to cover her medical expenses.

The media’s failure to report all the facts in high-profile lawsuits, such as the McDonald’s coffee case, contributes to the misinformation and general misunderstanding of the justice system that pervades our society today. Ultimately, this misinformation is why laws to restrict the legal rights of citizens have gained support in state legislatures, including Georgia’s.

The following are the stories of three people who have been injured in a Georgia hospital and who were left with no avenue to justice, thanks to a new Georgia law that makes patients responsible for injuries caused by sloppy health care professionals – not the medical providers that made the mistakes.

DAVID BROWN

Columbus bricklayer and artist David Brown rushed to his local emergency room after severely cutting his right hand on a broken glass table. He was immediately taken to the emergency room, where a physician stitched up his hand and ordered him to return in seven days to have the stitches removed. However, the physician never examined the depth of the cut, and never checked the wound for broken glass.

When David returned one week later, a different physician told him that he had extensive and permanent nerve damage in his right hand and arm. The doctor told David that he should have been admitted for surgery on the day he was injured – not stitches – which would have prevented the nerve damage. At the doctor’s recommendation, David has seen a surgeon and a neurosurgeon, but he cannot afford the operation that would replace the nerve in his arm.

To add insult to injury, David and his family have been unable to secure legal representation because the “Emergency Room immunity” provision of the law makes it nearly impossible to hold medical providers accountable for their actions in the ER. It requires patients to prove “gross negligence,” which means proving that their medical provider willfully and knowingly mistreated them. This is virtually impossible to prove in an emergency setting, after the fact.

Today, David continues to have numbness in three fingers and the acute pain in his right arm. Because he is right-handed, he can no longer work for his family masonry business. Nor can he create his art.

Posted at 10:59 AM, Jan 19, 2007 in Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)