Navy Veteran Paralyzed After VA Missed Spinal Infection, Settles for $1 Million

On March 2, 2017, Duane Keezer walked into the Ralph H. Johnson Veterans Administration Medical Center in Charleston complaining of radiating lower back and groin pain. Providers there attributed his symptoms to musculoskeletal strain, gave him pain medication and muscle relaxers, and sent him home.

Ten days later Keezer was back in an emergency room, this time at Waccamaw Community Hospital. Clinicians there recognized what the VA had missed: the classic signs of a spinal epidural abscess, a bacterial infection collecting in the space between the spinal cord and the surrounding bone. The condition is well-documented in medical literature as a time-sensitive emergency because cord compression worsens the longer the abscess goes untreated.

Even after that diagnosis, treatment did not begin promptly. Keezer was transferred back to the VA for imaging and intervention, but providers failed to act for several more hours. During that window he developed night sweats, chills, and progressive numbness and weakness in his legs. By the time surgeons operated, the damage to his spinal cord was permanent. He was left paralyzed in both legs.

Keezer and his wife Sharon filed suit against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act in the District of South Carolina. Brad Lanford and Janek Kazmierski of the Law Office of Kenneth E. Berger handled the case alongside co-counsel Thomas Valet of Rappaport, Glass, Levine and Zullo. The plaintiffs argued that a competent emergency provider examining Keezer on March 2 should have ordered imaging and initiated treatment before his condition deteriorated. A hospitalist retained as an expert, Dr. Robert Powers of Charlottesville, Virginia, supported that position.

Mediation initially ended without agreement. The parties returned to the table and, on November 15, 2022, settled for $1 million. The case was captioned Duane Keezer and Sharon Keezer v. The United States of America, No. 2:21-cv-01985, before Judge David Norton.