ORLANDO - It was supposed to be a happy few days at Walt Disney World for Henalori "Hena" McGee. Then the abdominal pain started.
Her trip to a hospital emergency room left her brain damaged. Four years later, in an Orlando courtroom, a jury awarded McGee and her family a $78.5-million verdict against the hospital.
The medical malpractice award, thought to be the largest in Florida history, has become the symbol of juries run amok. Those calling for reform say it's an example of a jury being swayed by emotion, and lashing out with an award that can bankrupt hospitals and their insurers and drive doctors out of practice.
For McGee, the journey to a $78.5-million verdict began with a trip to Disney's Magic Kingdom and pain that just wouldn't go away.
The 40-year-old Lake Worth woman was in town with her husband, Darrell, and their 4-year-old grandson in April 1998. Darrell McGee, who worked in the insurance industry, was at Disney for a convention.
During the visit, McGee complained of pain on her right side.
Before bed that night, she took a warm bath, hoping it would help. Her husband suggested she take some Tylenol. After midnight, McGee woke him. The pain was too intense to tolerate.
An ambulance rushed her to Sand Lake Hospital, owned by Orlando Regional Healthcare System Inc. During the trip, McGee vomited twice.
"This hospital didn't treat this lady like an emergency," McGee's attorney, Jesse Faerber, said in a recent interview. "They didn't pay a whole lot of attention to her at the emergency room."
At the emergency room, a nurse took McGee's vital signs and history. Her blood pressure and respiration were high, but her temperature was normal. McGee, if in pain, was alert.
A doctor's assistant checked McGee a half hour later and ordered blood work. He suspected that McGee had gallstones, kidney stones or appendicitis.
A defense doctor later testified blood work would have shown McGee was bleeding internally. But once the results were ready, McGee's lawyer said, no one checked until it was too late.
The on-duty doctor testified that he examined McGee 40 to 50 minutes after her arrival. But he didn't note his exam on her chart. McGee's attorney said he didn't conduct the exam and argued at trial it was two hours before she was seen by a doctor.
Every minute McGee waited, she was bleeding internally because of an undetected tumor the size of a grapefruit attached to her liver.
McGee was put in a bed, Faerber told jurors at trial, and "they left her there. She was whimpering. She was doubled over in pain."
McGee's family declined, through their attorney, to be interviewed. But in trial testimony, Darrell McGee said, "She had tears in her eyes. . . . I tried to assure her everything would be all right."
He said his wife told him, "It's really hurting, Darrell. It's hurting me a lot."
Darrell McGee said he went to see whether he could get someone to take care of his wife. He testified before trial that a nurse told him his wife had just been given pain medication.
"It's gallstones," he said a nurse told him.
At that point, Faerber said, the doctor couldn't have known. He hadn't looked at results of blood work. And he hadn't given her an ultrasound that he said would have discovered the tumor.
Darrell McGee had to take care of his grandson in the waiting room. "I told her I loved her," he said. "And I walked out."
The tumor had burst, and McGee went into shock, nearly bleeding to death. She went into cardiac arrest as she waited. For 13 minutes, her heart stopped.
When McGee was revived, her brain was severely damaged. Surgery removed the benign tumor.
Lawyer Richard Allen, representing the hospital, said the tumor was so rare, emergency room personnel could not have reasonably foreseen it.
"This is a sympathetic case," he told jurors. "We believe . . . the standard of care was not only met, but we did, in fact, save this lady's life."
Today, McGee uses a wheelchair, is nearly blind and unable to do anything for herself.
The former department store sales clerk can communicate, just barely. But her cognitive ability, relatives say, is greatly impaired. She can hardly talk.
She still dreams. At night, she sometimes screams, testified Rose McGee, Darrell's mother. She "says she's seeing things, like her body was falling off or she was dead. . . . All kinds of crazy things."
McGee's life span is expected to be a normal one.
"People like to trivialize big verdicts," Faerber said in an interview. "But juries don't award lots of money because somebody hurt their little finger. This is the wrong case to be the poster child for tort reform. This is a real tragedy."
Of the jury's $78.5-million verdict in 2002, $70-million was for noneconomic damages. But a judge later reduced the award to $22.5 million, with $14-million for pain and suffering. The verdict is on appeal. Jurors did not return calls for comment.
"When a dollar is spent toward paying a jury verdict, that's a dollar that has to come out of the health care system and not spent on health care," said David Evans, general counsel for Orlando Regional Healthcare.
"A verdict like this one affects the professional liability insurance market throughout Florida. It fuels carriers to increase their premiums and hurts patients and doctors."
