Jury Awards $3.25 Million in First McKean County Malpractice Plaintiff Verdict Since 2000 After Janitor Loses Leg Below Knee

The plaintiff, a 66-year-old elementary school janitor, went to the emergency room with pain and swelling in his left foot. Emergency room doctors and his primary care physician evaluated him and sent him home, failing to identify an abscess that had taken hold in the foot. Over the weeks that followed, the infection spread. By the time the severity of his condition became undeniable, surgeons had no choice but to amputate his left leg below the knee.

Victor Pribanic of Pribanic and Pribanic filed suit against the ER physicians and the primary care doctor, arguing that a reasonable examination and proper follow-through would have caught the abscess early enough to treat it without surgery. The defense countered that the patient himself shared blame, with their ER physician expert testifying that the janitor had been 'reckless' and had not taken the antibiotics he was prescribed.

That testimony backfired. Pribanic and his co-counsel Sherie Painter Cannin discovered a hospital document instructing the patient to stop the initial antibiotic, directly contradicting what the defense expert had told the jury. When Pribanic confronted the internal medicine expert with a pointed hypothetical about the standards that apply even in veterinary care, the expert conceded that the patient's care 'wasn't documented.' The hospital document became the turning point of the six-day trial.

The jury returned a verdict of $3.25 million and apportioned 99 percent of fault to the treating physicians and 1 percent to the plaintiff. Judge Christopher Hauser, who had never before presided over a case in which a McKean County jury sided with an injured patient in a medical malpractice matter, presided over the trial.

The verdict was the first favorable med-mal plaintiff result in McKean County since 2000 and the largest in the county's history. No post-trial reduction has been reported.