A medical malpractice law firm with an office in Uniondale has expanded into the Bronx, having already won an $80 million verdict in that county.
Duffy & Duffy, which has an office at RXR Plaza, now also has a location at 388 Canal Place in the Bronx to strengthen its capacity in serving residents and families in the borough on medical malpractice, nursing home abuse and personal injury matters.
“Opening an office in the Bronx is about showing up for the community” Michael Duffy, managing partner and general counsel at Duffy & Duffy, told LIBN.
“Bronx families deserve accessible, high-level legal representation close to home, especially when they’ve been harmed by preventable medical negligence,” Duffy said.
The firm secured the $80 million verdict in 2022, for a client who suffered permanent neurocognitive injuries, after a jury found that Jacobi Medical Center, part of NYC Health & Hospitals, was negligent. The client was born at 23 weeks following inadequate prenatal care, despite a known history of cervical weakness in the mother. The client suffered catastrophic injuries, including cerebral palsy, chronic lung disease, and profound intellectual and developmental disabilities.
James LiCalzi, partner and associate general counsel at Duffy & Duffy, said in a news release that had “the doctors had provided our client’s mother with the proper medical care required under the circumstances, this tragedy could have been prevented.”
Duffy & Duffy cited the case as an example of its work on medical accountability matters in the Bronx. The opening of the Bronx office further expands the firm’s capacity to handle such matters for the community, according to the news release.
In addition to serving Long Island and New York City, the firm also serves clients in Westchester County.
A Florida jury ordered Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital on Thursday to pay more than $261 million to the subject of Netflix’s “Take Care of Maya” documentary, whose family claimed in a $225 million medical malpractice suit that the hospital’s drastic actions had led to her mother’s suicide.
The six-person jury deliberated two days before finding the medical center in St. Petersburg, Florida, liable for all seven claims by Maya Kowalski’s family, including false imprisonment, battery, negligence, initial infliction of emotional distress and intentional inflection of emotional distress causing death. Maya’s mother, Beata Kowalski, killed herself after Maya was kept from seeing her in the hospital, was removed from her care by the state and was involuntarily hospitalized for three months in 2016 and 2017.
Maya Kowalski in the Netflix documentary “Take Care of Maya,” which was released in June.
The jury awarded the Venice, Florida, family $211 million in compensatory damages early Thursday. After deliberating again in the evening, they returned a verdict of $50 million in punitive damages, including for false imprisonment and specifically intending to and in fact harming Maya Kowalski.
Maya, now 17, sobbed openly as soon as the first verdict was announced in court, clutching her mother’s rosary. She sat between her father and brother, who each broke down when the verdicts related to Beata Kowalski’s 2017 death were read. Their reactions were more muted during the second phase, when the verdicts concerned only Maya’s treatment by the hospital.
Lawyers for the hospital argued that Maya, who had been previously diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, or CRPS, was a victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. People (usually parents) with the rare mental illness falsely claim another person’s illness or make that person sick. Beata Kowalski, a registered nurse, had pursued unconventional treatments as Maya’s health deteriorated. Maya suffered from debilitating pain and was using a wheelchair because she’d lost function in her extremities. At one specialist’s urging, the Kowalskis took Maya to Mexico, where she received a massive dose of ketamine and was intentionally placed in a coma.
As documented in “Take Care of Maya,” which garnered nearly 14 million views on Netflix in the first two weeks after its June premiere, Maya’s health improved dramatically after she came out of the coma and continued to receive ketamine treatments after her return to Florida. After a bout of severe pain, however, the Kowalskis took Maya to the emergency room at the St. Petersburg hospital and she was admitted. When doctors there learned about the possibly life-threatening ketamine infusion and other treatments, they contacted child protective services, which responded by isolating the 10-year-old from her family and refusing to release her from the hospital.
In a statement sent to HuffPost, Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital defense attorney Howard Hunter said that they plan to appeal the verdict, citing “clear and prejudicial errors” in the trial and accusing the Kowalskis’ attorneys of misleading the jury.
“The facts and the law remain on our side, and we will continue to defend the lifesaving and compassionate care provided to Maya Kowalski by the physicians, nurses and staff of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital and the responsibility of all mandatory reporters in Florida to speak up if they suspect child abuse,” Hunter said. “We are determined to defend the vitally important obligation of mandatory reporters to report suspected child abuse and protect the smallest and most vulnerable among us.”
Before the court reconvened Thursday afternoon to address punitive damages, another Johns Hopkins lawyer told the jury that “punishing and deterring and trying to silence health care providers when they have genuine concern is going to be tragic.”
But it was the Kowalskis who were punished and silenced by the hospital staff, the Kowalskis’ attorneys argued, by refusing to follow Maya’s previous treatment regimen, discounting her symptoms and keeping her from seeing or even speaking to her mother.
“Whenever I dream, it’s not dreams, it’s more nightmares and remembering all the trauma,” Maya testified last month about her hospitalization.
“The Kowalskis became the enemies,” Gregory Anderson, the family’s lead attorney, said in his closing argument.
A jury has returned a $27 million verdict against a central Iowa medical clinic after a man with bacterial meningitis was misdiagnosed with the flu, suffered strokes and said he has been permanently injured
DES MOINES, Iowa — An Iowa jury has returned a $27 million verdict against a Des Moines medical clinic after a man with bacterial meningitis was misdiagnosed with the flu, suffered strokes and said he has been permanently injured.
The Polk County jury returned the verdict Monday in the lawsuit filed in 2017 against UnityPoint Clinic Family Medicine in Des Moines.
Joseph Dudley and his wife Sarah Dudley filed the lawsuit after Joseph became ill in February 2017 and went to the clinic in southeast Des Moines. They reported he had dizziness, delusions, a headache, high fever and a cough.
A physician’s assistant in charge of the clinic at the time diagnosed him with the flu although tests returned negative, said Dudley’s lawyer Nick Rowley. Dudley was given Tamiflu and a pain reliever and sent home.
Two days later he went to the emergency room at UnityPoint Iowa Methodist Medical Center, where a doctor diagnosed the bacterial meningitis resulting from a heart valve infection. Dudley was put into a medically induced coma and was in intensive care for eight days during which he had a series of strokes causing the loss of hearing in his right ear, vertigo and dizziness, numb feet and legs, and much slower thinking and reaction time, Rowley said.
“Mr. Dudley will suffer from a lifetime of permanent brain damage because they failed to perform a simple blood test, a complete blood count,” said Rowley, founder of Trial Lawyers for Justice.
West Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Health has 400 clinics, 20 regional hospitals and 19 community network hospitals in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin.
UnityPoint Health spokesman Mark Tauscheck said the company believes it met well-established standards of care.
“We respect the jury process but strongly disagree with this verdict and are exploring all options including an appeal,” he said.
