The patient’s family was shocked by his unexpected death. They reached out to a law firm, and discussed the case with an attorney.
After reviewing the situation, the attorney and the family came to an agreement to proceed with a lawsuit. The law firm would take 40% of any financial award, in addition to their expenses. If no financial award was obtained, the family would not owe the law firm any money.
The agreement between the family and the law firm is shown below.
Multiple parties were named in the lawsuit. As is typical in medical malpractice lawsuits, multiple physicians were named as defendants despite only having passing involvement in the case. This included the attending of the teaching service, despite the fact that he never saw or evaluated the patient. He was ultimately dismissed from the case.
The remaining defendants were the EM physician, the hospitalist, and the first cardiologist. The hospital was also named in the lawsuit, and the plaintiffs alleged an EMTALA violation.
The complaint against the EM physician is below for newsletter subscribers, including the allegations of negligence. The allegations against the other physicians were essentially identical.
Once the lawsuit was filed, both the defendants and plaintiffs were deposed. The next pages will cover the depositions of several of the physicians. The patient’s wife was also interviewed about her perspective on the events leading up to her husband’s death.