A Pulaski County jury on Wednesday cleared Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock of wrongdoing in the lawsuit of a woman who was blinded by brain damage caused by complications from throat surgery.
The eight women and four men deliberated about three hours to reject Marquitta Corbin's malpractice claim 10-2 after an eight-day trial before Circuit Judge Chip Welch. A nine-juror majority is required for a verdict.
The Conway woman blamed hospital nurses for overlooking signs that she was suffering post-surgical bleeding that caused her neck to swell so much that her air supply was restricted, which caused her to pass out from a loss of oxygen.
But in closing arguments Wednesday, hospital attorney J. Adam Wells said there was no evidence that nurses had overlooked or ignored signs that blood was collecting in Corbin's neck.
Because Corbin had been reclining in her bed, the swelling did not become critical until she stood up. That means the nurses couldn't see the problem until it had cut off Corbin's airway, he said.
"They [the defense] can't point to anything that [nurses] knew or should've known that would make the outcome any different," he said. "This is about whether the nurses did what they were supposed to do in taking care of her and whether they caused this to happen."
Corbin's care team saved her life, Wells told the jury, saying they acted as soon as they saw she was in distress. To believe they weren't doing their job, jurors would have to believe both they and Corbin's visiting aunt either ignored or overlooked for hours blatant signs that blood was causing her neck to swell, Wells said. But those symptoms weren't there, despite defense claims, he said.
What happened to Corbin was a rare but foreseeable consequence of the surgery that doctors had warned her about months in advance, he said. Jurors should not take Corbin's "tragic outcome" as evidence that the nurses who cared for her did anything wrong, he said.
Corbin's attorney Hugh Crisp told the jury that her nurses let her down.
"If they would've done their job, there wouldn't have been any [tragic] end," he said.
He said jurors should not rely on the testimony of Corbin's doctors who told jurors the nurses had done nothing wrong. The doctors, who were not defendants in the suit, have a financial relationship with the hospital that they do not want to jeopardize, Crisp said.
Corbin had surgery to remove her thyroid from her neck in September 2011. She was in a coma for most of a day after passing out and spent a week on a ventilator. She spent 11 days in the hospital followed by two weeks in rehabilitation. She sued in April 2013.
Metro on 03/19/2015