Jury sides with clinician in medical malpractice case blamed on smoking
A recent medical malpractice case was resolved in Pennsylvania when a jury declined to blame a clinician for his patient’s death from cancer.
The patient, a 47-year old woman, had been going to the defendant urologist since 2005 after blood was discovered in her urine during a routine gynecological appointment. According to the argument by the plaintiff’s attorney, the defendant clinician originally conducted tests but discontinued some key tests for over a year, during which time the patient’s cancer developed. The plaintiff’s attorney argued that despite aggressive treatment, including removal of a kidney and several rounds of chemotherapy, the cancer was too advanced to stop by the time it was diagnosed. The patient subsequently died as a result of the cancer. The clinician, argued the plaintiff, was negligent for not monitoring his patient’s symptoms more carefully.
The defense argued that the patient’s death was due to a particularly aggressive form of cancer – small cell cancer – which often kills patients before they are even diagnosed. The defense attorney blamed the patient’s death on her lifelong smoking habit. She had reported smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes every day since she was 12. According to the clinician’s testimony, he begged the patient to quit smoking, but she refused, even continuing to smoke heavily as she underwent chemotherapy.
“The choices that you make in this life, you have to be responsible for. That’s all we’re asking for here,” said the defense attorney to the jury. “The cause of [the patient’s] demise was her smoking.” The jury agreed, finding the clinician not negligent in the death of the patient.
Filed under: General Problems
If insurance companies stopped paying for treatments of self imposed diseases, like lung and lip cancers caused by smoking or liver disorders caused by excess alcohol consumption, more people may quit these habits.
yeah, right… or die from them.
@simple pharmacist,
what’s next? auto insurance that won’t pay because you weren’t careful enough? life insurance that won’t pay because you were in a gay nightclub when a terrorist got pissed off? maybe you won’t qualify for worker’s comp because you didn’t complete your college degree and had to take a manual labor job instead of getting that office job.
if you pay your premiums and your insurance is current the insurance company needs to stand by the agreement.
How about stopping paying for knee replacements for runners/joggers that seems like a self imposed injury as well ? Where does the line become drawn and who decides ?
She likely wouldn’t have survived anyway, but that doesn’t excuse his responsibility to diagnose her in a timely manner.