PRINTWatson v. Bailey et al.
November 16, 2006 | 12:00 a.m. CST
The girth
The case takes up nearly a foot of shelf space in the Boone County Clerk’s office. But for all the paper it has amassed, it’s a fluke that the case is in our courthouse at all.
Related ArticlesThe gist
Francis Watson, who lives in Callao in Macon County, ended up suing 13 defendants after months of examinations, treatments and surgery didn’t cure his severe back pain.
What began as a united effort to treat an injury doctors originally thought was a spinal compression fracture turned into the donnybrook that now involves every single doctor and hospital who ever treated Watson from October 2002 until April 2003.
Watson now alleges in court documents that doctors misdiagnosed his condition and failed to spot an infection in his back that didn’t require surgery at all.
Rather than helping him, Watson alleges, the medical hardware used in the surgery performed in January 2003 by defendant John Bailey, a doctor of osteopathy, caused serious and permanent injuries.
“Mr. Watson never had a condition that required surgery,” says Leland Dempsey, Watson’s attorney. “That’s the last thing you want to do with a condition like his. It’s like throwing gasoline onto a fire.”
What Dempsey is referring to is an abdominal staph infection that he says his client acquired after being “thumped” by a farm animal prior to experiencing his back pain. It’s not uncommon for these types of inflammations to migrate, and that’s how it ended up in his spine, Dempsey says.
The lawsuit alleges that Watson needed hospitalization several times following the unnecessary surgery. In May 2003, doctors at Boone Medical Center removed the medical hardware and finally began treating the infection.
But that treatment won’t cure Watson, who alleges in his lawsuit that he will never regain full function in his back. He is on constant pain medication and will never be able to work again, Dempsey says. “He’s only in his 40s. He’s still a young man, but he’s suffering from catastrophic injuries.”
That’s not how the doctors, radiologists and other health care providers who’ve become enmeshed in this case see things, says Philip Dupant, the lead attorney for defendant Northeast Regional Medical Center in Adair County. He says that because so many doctors who treated Watson were in agreement about the surgery, they didn’t act negligently.
“This plaintiff claims that so many people missed an issue. But maybe it’s not an issue,” Dupant says. “It depends on your definition of negligence. If this many doctors agreed on it, then they acted appropriately.”
So, why is this case being tried in Boone County?
Only one of the defendants, Columbia Radiology, is connected to Boone County, and that was enough to bring the case here even though no treatment was provided locally, Dempsey says.
Concerned that the prominence of the defendants as employers in Randolph or Adair counties could bias jurors against his client, Dempsey decided to take the case to a more distant county when he had the opportunity to do so.
If the case were filed today, the trial couldn’t take place in Boone County, Dupant says. The laws have changed since Watson’s case was filed in 2004, and there now needs to be a more significant connection to a county before it can become the proper venue for a trial.
The stakes
Dempsey says Watson’s medical bills total more than $500,000 and that he’s missing out on 25-30 years of work, so they’re seeking compensation for those losses.
Dempsey also says the case alleges issues with the way Northeast Regional Medical Center decided which doctors were fit to practice within the facility. Dempsey says there’s more involved than just medical malpractice.
“In a lot of ways this can be much more serious than negligence,” Dempsey says. “It can be about the credibility of an institution.”
The status
Although the case was filed two years ago, Dupant says it’s only about halfway through the process.
“It’s a little longer than usual for a case like this,” he says.
“My guess is that this case is taking so long because it takes a long time to get things scheduled. Especially with all the paperwork.”
