Kaiser Permanente Faces $25M Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

Kaiser Permanente Faces $25M Medical Malpractice Lawsuit

Introduction

A man has sued Kaiser Permanente, a healthcare company, whose neurosurgeon performed brain surgery on Zimmer, which resulted in permanent brain damage to him.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff was suffering from headaches, confusion, and agitation when he entered the emergency room at Kaiser Permanente Sunnyside Medical Center in February 2018. A CT scan reported a large mass in his brain, which the neurosurgeon identified it, as hemangioblastoma. The surgeon advised the plaintiff to get the tumor removed by surgery. After the surgery, the plaintiff was not able to communicate as the nurses stated his speech as "word salad."

Another CT scan performed on the plaintiff indicated that the surgery was performed on the wrong part of the brain by the neurosurgeon, and instead of a tumor, the healthy tissue of his brain has been removed. The lawsuit alleged that the removal of the tissue resulted in difficulty for the plaintiff to read and write as the tissue helped in language development.

A Portland attorney who represented the plaintiff said that the plaintiff is seeking $100,000 for medical expenses, $725,000 for lifetime medical care, lifetime living expenses of $6.1 million, and economic damages of $18 million.

The slow-growing, benign tumor was obstructing the plaintiff's brain, the suit says, leading to a decision to perform surgery to remove it.After his morning surgery, the plaintiff couldn’t communicate with recovery nurses, who described his speech as “word salad,” the lawsuit says. 

The tissue had come from a part of the plaintiff's cerebrum that helps with language development instead of from his cerebellum, his lawsuit alleges. Wrobel performed another surgery on the plaintiff that evening, with the assistance of another doctor, the suit says, successfully removing the mass.

The plaintiff who had suffered a brain injury at 19, had been able to care for himself and live independently before the surgeries, his suit says, the result of extensive rehab. But after the surgery, the suit says he could not read three-letter words out loud and wrote words like “cat” and “dog” as “cath” and “doag.”

The plaintiff is represented by Portland attorney Robert Beatty-Walters. The suit seeks $100,000 for medical expenses, $725,000 for lifetime medical care, lifetime living expenses of $6.1 million, and economic damages of $18 million.