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Barnes-Jewish Hospital is not to blame for a patient’s separated sternum despite the man’s allegations that the chest bone separated because two hospital employees allowed him to fall, a St. Louis jury said in a unanimous verdict Friday at the end of a weeklong trial.
Leonard Cervantes, who represented plaintiff Fred Reynolds, had asked the jury to award his client roughly $925,000 in economic damages and up to $500,000 in pain and suffering, and other noneconomic damages.
The jury verdict fits a “typical pattern,” he said. “Jurors are already affected by all the propaganda” about so-called frivolous lawsuits.
According to the allegations, Reynolds had undergone coronary bypass surgery on Oct. 26, 2006, followed by a subsequent bypass surgery and the removal of stents five days later. In the course of the Oct. 31 surgery, the doctor opened the sternum, or chest bone, performed the double bypass, then wired the sternum together with eight separate wires, placing chest drainage tubes in Reynolds’ chest.
At about 4:30 a.m. Nov. 2, two attendants woke up Reynolds to weigh him. The plaintiff alleged one of the attendants let go, causing the patient to fall. The fall caused sternal dehiscence, or the separation of the sternum, Reynolds alleged.
Reynolds’ hospital stay was extended for 3½ months, and the patient had to undergo surgery to rewire his sternum, he alleged.
Barnes-Jewish Hospital, however, denied the fall ever happened.
Hospital personnel didn’t document the fall, and while Cervantes said the lack of documentation proves the hospital tried to cover up its failures and avoid its obligations, defense lawyer Teresa Bartosiak said it’s proof that Reynolds never fell.
“If this case were a Perry Mason episode, it would be the episode of ‘It Never Happened,’” Bartosiak told the jury, picking up on a theme Cervantes mentioned in his closing argument.
“They’re claiming that there was a fall in this case. There is no documentation of a fall, and the only support for a fall comes from Mr. Reynolds,” she said.
Bartosiak said her client would not allow her to comment on the verdict.
Cervantes invoked the lessons he learned from his parents — to tell the truth and own up mistakes — as he told the jury Friday morning, “The case is really all about patient safety. … We want Barnes hospital to take responsibility for its patient.
“We got into this [lawsuit] because the hospital has never accepted responsibility,” he said. “Instead of acknowledging what happened, they told one story, then another story, then another story.”
A female juror, who refused to be identified, said there was no evidence Reynolds fell, or that he didn’t fall.
But the hospital “had more on their side as far as what the doctors said” could cause the sternum to separate, she said. “It doesn’t have to be anything traumatic for this to happen.”
The case is Reynolds v. Barnes-Jewish Hospital, 0822-CC09874.
