$5.8 Million Verdict for Family of Attorney Who Died of Untreated Melanoma

Richard Semsker was a 47-year-old attorney when he went to the Silver Spring, Maryland, dermatology practice of Norman A. Lockshin, M.D., P.A. in the fall of 2004. He was treated on five occasions that season for growths on his back. One of the practice's physicians, Dr. Michael Albert, handled the growths but left a large mole in place, choosing to watch it rather than remove it.

The mole was an early melanoma. It stayed on Semsker's back for roughly two more years. By the time it was finally taken off in 2006, the cancer had spread into dozens of lymph nodes, and it was no longer curable. Semsker died, survived by his wife and two daughters.

Patrick Malone & Associates took the case to trial in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County in Rockville, with Patrick Malone as lead trial counsel alongside co-counsel from a Norfolk firm. Over five days, the plaintiffs argued that the standard of care called for removing or biopsying the mole in 2004, not monitoring it. Their expert, Dr. John Kirkwood, a melanoma researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, testified that prompt removal in the fall of 2004 would have given Semsker about a 95 percent chance of a complete cure. The two-year delay, he said, let the cancer travel from the skin into the bloodstream and become incurable.

On November 14, 2008, after deliberating for roughly six hours, the jury found Dr. Albert liable for Semsker's death and awarded his family $5,805,000. Of that total, $3 million was for non-economic damages.

The case did not end at the verdict. The trial judge declined to apply Maryland's statutory cap on non-economic damages, a ruling that favored the family. The defense appealed to the Court of Appeals of Maryland, then the state's highest court. In January 2010, that court reversed the judge on the cap question and held that the limit applied, with several medical organizations weighing in as amici curiae. Applying the cap cut the non-economic award to the statutory ceiling of about $812,500 and brought the family's total recovery down to roughly $3.6 million.