Court Awards $1.3 Million in Sanctions Against Hospital and Lawyer
A West Virginia state court judge has awarded sanctions of $1.3 million against Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital, located in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and its lawyer for their conduct before and during a 2006 medical malpractice trial. Chief Judge Robert A. Waters of the Circuit Court of Wood County found that the hospital and its lawyer engaged in extensive misconduct in several areas. A copy of the Court’s 54 page order is here.
The Court found that the hospital had:
- defrauded the plaintiff, as found by the jury by clear and convincing evidence;
- violated multiple court orders, as found by the Court on December 19, 2005 (at an earlier hearing);
- made numerous material misrepresentations of fact and law to the plaintiff and the Court, both before and during the trial of the action;
- concealed important evidence until the commencement of trial and even in the middle of trial, including the very documents the hospital had been ordered to produce by the Court;
- destroyed, concealed or altered material evidence in advance of trial, including cardiac monitor strip times and nurse's notes;
- advanced frivolous defenses before the Court; and
- wasted countless hours of the Court's time, as well as that of the plaintiff and his counsel, through all of the above misconduct.
In the underlying case, Boggs v. Camden-Clark Memorial Hospital, Civil Action No. 03-C-296, the plaintiff alleged that Hilda Boggs went to Camden-Clark in 2001 for surgery on a broken ankle, but was negligently given an overdose of lidocaine by the anesthesiologist, which interfered with her breathing and stopped her heart, resulting in her death. In March 2006, the jury returned a verdict of $6.5 million, including punitive damages, which is thought to be the largest verdict in Wood County history. The verdict is on appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia and is scheduled to be presented in September.
The plaintiff is represented by Christopher J. Regan and Geoffrey C. Brown of Bordas & Bordas, PLLC in Wheeling, West Virginia and Christopher Rinehart of Carlile Patchen & Murphy LLP in Columbus, Ohio. In March, I wrote about another medical malpractice verdict obtained by the plaintiff's counsel.
In calculating the amount of the sanctions, which include attorney's fees and expenses, Chief Judge Waters awarded attorney's fees of $1,206,002.50 to both firms and expenses of $153,238.52, for a total of $1,359,241.02. He compensated every lawyer who worked on the case at his or her reasonably hourly rate for the number of hours each expended, rather than using an average hourly rate.
