[Vision2020] update on Jack Hill

[Bill London]

Spokesman-Review
Patient's case to be retried 
Malpractice suit filed after man had stroke
Karen Dorn Steele 
Staff writer
March 2, 2008

A Spokane appeals court has ordered a trial for a prominent Moscow, Idaho, man who suffered a severe stroke while in a Spokane hospital recovering from knee surgery and whose medical malpractice case was dismissed by a Spokane County Superior Court judge.

The lawsuit of John "Jack" Hill and his wife, Janice Smith-Hill, should proceed to a jury, the Washington Court of Appeals Division III ruled last week. 

"We conclude that there is a sufficient showing of a relationship between the breaches of care alleged by the Hills and the resulting injury to avoid summary dismissal," the court ruled.

     
In their legal briefs, lawyers for Sacred Heart Medical Center and Drs. Bryce Andrus and Louise Harder - two medical residents who helped care for Hill - argued that patients should expect a lower standard of care from first-year residents, who are not fully trained and require supervision. The appeals court rejected that argument.

"Washington does not recognize a lower standard of care for resident physicians," the judges said in their opinion.

One of the judges on the three-judge panel deciding the case was Debra L. Stephens, recently appointed to the Washington Supreme Court by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Plaintiff's lawyer Robert J. Crotty hailed the court's ruling. "We couldn't be more pleased after what happened to this family," Crotty said last week. Attorneys for the hospital didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.

Hill's wife, Moscow attorney Janice Smith-Hill, said her 64-year-old husband retired from his job as Moscow's superintendent of public schools in 1998 and was elected to the Moscow City Council.

He'd just been re-elected when he had a devastating stroke at Sacred Heart Medical Center that left him unable to speak and paralyzed on one side. He lost his political career, Smith-Hill said.

The talented pianist can no longer play and remains so disabled that the couple couldn't travel to their son's wedding in San Francisco last September.

"Our lives have been torn asunder," Smith-Hill said.

The malpractice lawsuit takes aim at Sacred Heart Medical Center, Rockwood Clinic and nearly a dozen doctors for problems that developed after Hill's knee surgery in June 2004.

After nine days of injections of a heparin compound to prevent blood clots, Hill developed a large blood blister at the site of the injections and became confused and short of breath. His blood platelet count dropped 70 percent in two days.

On the 10th day, Hill suffered a stroke, a pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis. The stroke left him paralyzed on the right side.

His lawyers submitted affidavits from several experts, including Dr. Kenneth Bauer, a hematologist who teaches at Harvard Medical School. Bauer reviewed Hill's records and concluded the national standard of care had been violated in Hill's case.

Rockwood Clinic and Drs. Andrus, Harder, Judy Benson, Judy Swanson and Klaus Gottlieb moved for summary judgment.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Sam Cozza sided with the Spokane doctors and rejected the opinions of Hill's medical experts, including Candice Mohar, a nurse with a Ph.D. who said Hill's hospital nurses also violated the national standard of care.

The appeals court disagreed.

"Nurse Mohar certainly had the necessary knowledge, skill, experience, training and education to establish the standard of care for nurses and to say whether those standards were violated here," the appeals court said.
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