West Palm Beach Managing Partner Barry Postman and Partner David Kirsch obtained a complete defense verdict in a three-week medical malpractice case in Palm Beach County. The case involved our client, an oncologist/hematologist who failed to order a blood transfusion on a patient who had a critically low blood platelet count.
The day following the failure of the doctor to order the blood transfusion, the patient suffered an inter-cranial bleeding that admittedly was the result of the failure to transfuse and resulted in the patient’s death. Our team evaluated the chances of success at trial to be in the range of 35% to 45%. The Plaintiff asked the jury for 7.55 million dollars. The jury was out 3 hours before reaching a full defense verdict.
During each day of trial, Plaintiff’s counsel used various unconventional trial tactics included, but not limiting to:
(1) taking so long with their expert on live direct examination and then hoping to have him fly back to New Jersey so that the defense would be forced to cross examine him via Zoom;
(2) ambushing the defense with text messages never disclosed in discovery in order to support the admission of hearsay statements constituting an adverse standard care opinion by a treating doctor;
(3) convincing the Judge at sidebar to limit the defense’s cross-examination regarding remarriage of Plaintiff by providing surprise caselaw that predated the wrongful death statute (which specifically says that evidence of remarriage is admissible);
(4) when reading the mortality tables - stating the US Government has determined specifically that the decedent (a cancer patient) would have lived another 28 years but for the negligence of the Defendant;
(5) supplying the defense expert with only a summary of guidelines that did not contain the disclaimer that confirmed that the guidelines were not the standard of care;
(6) seeking to impeach our doctor client with condolences he gave to one of the surviving daughters during the course of trial by construing such statements as an admission of guilt (when the law is clear that such statements of condolences are inadmissible); and
(7) referencing the recent FSU school shooting during closing in an attempt to compound a survivor’s pain and suffering.
Special thanks to Associate Kenisha Morgan and Paralegal Karen Kosta for their assistance in the preparation of the trial and for Colleen Postman for making lunch for the trial team and the clients every day of the trial.
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