October 7, 2011

Clay Edwards and Joshua Davis successfully defended a general surgeon in Evansville, Indiana.  Plaintiffs, surviving spouse and daughter, alleged that the surgeon negligently failed to resect a section of bowel which suffered from obviously diminished blood flow in the course of a complicated 8-hour gallbladder removal and ventral hernia repair surgery. The decedent patient appeared well in the first two post-operative days following the surgery, but on the third day the patient’s status quickly declined as a result of a perforated bowel. The perforated bowel led to sepsis and ultimately systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS). A surgery to repair the perforated colon was undertaken on the third post-operative day from the initial surgery which was successful. The decedent patient did not regain consciousness after the surgery and passed away within a day thereafter. Defense experts from Indianapolis and Kokomo, Indiana, and Columbus, Ohio, testified that it was reasonable for the surgeon to have found the section of bowel which perforated viable at the close of the initial surgery, and that it was not a deviation from the standard of care to have failed to recognize that blood flow to that portion of bowel had been interrupted in the first surgery. The jury unanimously found in the surgeon’s favor.

This marks the ninth unanimous defense verdict obtained by O’Bryan, Brown and Toner in Evansville, IN since 2007.