August 08 2006 – Cancer patient’s award disappoints
A Fulton County jury delivered a cancer patient a disappointing $250,000 verdict today to compensate her for a doctor’s admitted mistake in treating the wrong side of her body.
Patient Dariel Hunt’s attorney, James Poe, had lobbied for $1 million or more.
After the verdict, Dr. Frederick Schwaibold apologized to the Hunts again outside the courtroom. He told them he wished they had received more money, said Dariel Hunt’s husband, George.
Schwaibold, who described the mishap and trial as “personally very devastating,” then hustled back to the hospital to treat a woman whose eyesight is in jeopardy and two men with prostate cancer.
“I couldn’t leave and dwell on ‘woe is me,’ ” the doctor said. “I had to drive back to the office and put on a lab coat and see my first patient.”
Jurors just weren’t convinced about the extent of damage to Hunt, who underwent 13 radiation treatments to the wrong side of her face.
Poe tried to convince jurors that Hunt, 61, will continue to suffer from dry mouth that has awakened her at night since the unnecessary treatment destroyed her right parotid gland, a producer of saliva located in front of and below the ear. He also told jurors her food tastes bland and she is more likely to have digestive problems and receding gums and lose her teeth.
George Hunt, a retired U.S. Air Force systems analyst, said he and his wife, a substitute teacher in Arizona, are disappointed but also glad the grueling process of bring a lawsuit to trial is over. He said defense attorneys seemed to accuse his wife of exaggerating her side effects and blame her for not discovering the mistake sooner.
“It was also implied that the patient was responsible for her own safety checks, and that’s ridiculous,” he said. “She was lying there in the dark” and her entire face was covered with a mask during the treatments. She finally asked the technician how the radiation was going to reach the left side of her face when she heard a clicking noise near her right ear. That prompted a discussion with her doctor, who halted the remaining slated 24 treatments.
The Hunts said they still respect Schwaibold, the Atlanta-based radiation oncologist who ordered the 2003 treatments at Piedmont Hospital. The doctor never described how the mistake happened. “We had made a mistake,” Schwaibold said after the verdict. “Something I had done thousands of times before didn’t happen as I intended. I don’t want to point fingers . . . I’m certain this won’t happen again.”
The doctor’s lead attorney, Jack G. Slover Jr., urged jurors to compensate the patient, but suggested a figure closer to $150,000.
The lawsuit, filed in 2004, stretched out over two years and involved a battle of medical experts from New York to Ontario, with the patient’s attorney making trips to question the experts. After attorney fees and expenses, George Hunt said, he and his wife expect less than half the awarded damages to remain.
