Cerebral Palsy at Frederick Memorial Hospital

Posted on June 8, 2009 by Greenberg & Bederman

Ryan Dineen has cerebral palsy, and it’s possible that he didn’t have to get it.

On May 7, 2000, Ryan’s mother Suzette was brought into Frederick Memorial Hospital. She was suffering from abdominal pain and was vomiting. She was also pregnant.

Frederick Memorial Hospital is not a small hospital, but it is not an overcrowded and understaffed one either. And while Frederick, Maryland is by no means a small town, it certainly isn’t Baltimore or Washington, D.C.

So the fact that Suzette Dineen was made to wait for three hours before receiving medical care defies all logic and reason. It also defied hospital policy.

According to a piece in The Frederick News:

“She arrived shortly after 5 a.m., complaining of pain, vomiting and diarrhea, Bekman said.

 

Instead of being taken immediately to the labor and delivery suite, Dineen was kept in the emergency room for about three hours without being examined by a physician, he said.

Nurses monitored Dineen and administered drugs for her pain, he said. At 5:45 a.m., a nurse took the baby's heart rate.

According to a complaint written by Bekman and his legal partner Julia Lodowki, a physician finally saw Dineen shortly after 8 a.m., after a nurse could not find the baby's heartbeat.

Bekman said the hospital's protocol is that women more than 20 weeks pregnant who are visiting the hospital complaining of abdominal pain should be monitored in the labor and delivery suite.”

This story does not have a happy ending. Ms. Dineen was rushed into an operating room for an emergency c-section delivery. Her son Ryan was born with cerebral palsy, and must be the recipient of specialized care for the rest of his life.

The attorneys for the hospital, doctors and nurses who failed to attend to Ms. Dineen made it seem as if the cerebral palsy was simply fait accompli, or just “one of those things that happened.” But we believe that the argument of Ms. Dineen’s attorneys was completely valid. One of the major causes of cerebral palsy is a lack of blood flow to the fetal brain, and it does not take much time for a lack of blood flow to do major damage. The three hours during which Ms. Dineen was ignored was more than enough time for that damage to occur.

What apparently made this case newsworthy were not the actions of the doctors, or even the nine years that it took for this case to be resolved in court. What seemed to garner the attention of the media in this case was the amount of money that was awarded to Ms. Dineen.

She was awarded $4 million, with $350,000 of that judgment for pain and suffering. While that may strike some people as a lot of money, we can practically guarantee you that it won’t seem that way to Ms. Dineen. It should be understood that she has been bearing the multiple costs of her son’s condition on her own for nine years. That’s nine years worth of treatment, medicine, visits to the doctor and therapy, both physical and mental.

The popular narrative is that Ms. Dineen is now “rolling in it,” or has “hit the jackpot.” But anyone with an understanding of her circumstances can tell you that that isn’t the case. In all probability, Ms. Dineen will have to put a great deal of that money towards considerable debt and the rest of it will have to go towards ensuring the care of her developmentally disabled son.  And regular, run-of-the-mill health care is expensive enough, much less the specialized care that cerebral palsy requires. This is a factor that should be considered before bemoaning the “outrageously high settlements” of lawsuits.

As far as we are concerned, Ms. Dineen’s judgment just barely qualifies as a “victory.” And if you were to ask her if she would rather have the $4 million or a son that was born without cerebral palsy, we have a good idea as to which option she would choose.

 

To learn more about medical malpractice issues and cerebral palsy, please read our cerebral palsy page.  To learn more about our medical malpractice lawyer, John Sellinger, please read John Sellinger's bio, or view his video at Utube.
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