$13.5 Million Verdict After Dana-Farber Oncologists Ignored 17 Days of Diarrhea During Experimental Chemo

In April 2003, Amy Altman, a 40-year-old mother of two young daughters, was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma and came to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston for treatment. Her oncologists enrolled her in a clinical trial that administered an aggressive chemotherapy regimen every two weeks rather than the standard three-week interval. Dana-Farber had used this accelerated protocol in children at other institutions, but Altman was the first adult the institute treated on it.

After two months of treatment, Altman began experiencing persistent diarrhea. When she reported three to four straight days of symptoms, her physicians did not order a stool culture or investigate a possible infection. The diarrhea continued for 17 to 18 consecutive days without any diagnostic workup. By the time doctors acted, a massive bacterial infection had already taken hold. She was diagnosed with sepsis and necrotizing fasciitis, the flesh-eating infection that had spread through her tissue.

Altman died on July 10, 2003, leaving behind a husband, a five-year-old daughter, and a ten-month-old daughter. A subsequent autopsy found that her Ewing's Sarcoma had been completely eradicated by the chemotherapy. The official cause of death was infection, and the autopsy report concluded that the treatment administered by the defendant physicians was a major cause of her death. In 2007, results from the nationwide clinical trial were published, showing that among all adult participants across the country, only Altman had died on the protocol.

Lubin and Meyer attorney Robert Higgins tried the case in Suffolk Superior Court in Boston. At trial, medical experts testified that oncologists Dr. Suzanne George and Dr. Jeffrey Morgan were negligent for failing to order a stool culture after the first wave of diarrhea, and again after 17 to 18 days of unrelenting symptoms. The experts testified that a timely workup would have detected the infection early enough to prevent Altman's death. A third defendant, Dr. Jayesh Desai, was found not negligent by the jury.

After nine hours of deliberation over two days, the jury returned a verdict of $9,436,000 against the two Dana-Farber oncologists (the Cancer Institute itself was not named as a defendant). With statutory interest, the total judgment came to $13,587,000. The Boston Globe reported on the verdict under the headline '$13.5 awarded in hospital death.' No reduction on appeal has been reported in court records or press coverage.