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<H2>Spokesman-Review</H2>
<H2>Patient's case to be retried </H2>
<H4 class=deck>Malpractice suit filed after man had stroke</H4>
<P class=byline><SPAN class=name><A
href="http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/bylines.asp?bylinename=Karen Dorn Steele">Karen
Dorn Steele </A></SPAN><BR>Staff writer<BR>March 2, 2008</P><!---------Code for Big Ads-------------------><!---------End Code for Big Ads------------------->
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.
</P>
<P>"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.</P>
<P>
<TABLE align=left>
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<TD></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>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.</P>
<P>"Washington does not recognize a lower standard of care for resident
physicians," the judges said in their opinion.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>"Our lives have been torn asunder," Smith-Hill said.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>On the 10th day, Hill suffered a stroke, a pulmonary embolism and deep vein
thrombosis. The stroke left him paralyzed on the right side.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>Rockwood Clinic and Drs. Andrus, Harder, Judy Benson, Judy Swanson and Klaus
Gottlieb moved for summary judgment.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>The appeals court disagreed.</P>
<P>"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.</P></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>