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Jury clears doctors of missed diagnosis
By CHASE SQUIRES, Times Staff Writer DADE CITY -- The longest-running trial Dade City has seen in years ended Friday after three weeks when a jury cleared two doctors accused of missing a diagnosis that damaged a woman's brain and took away part of her eyesight. Attorneys for plaintiff Janet Hays Wojcik, 39, turned down a $350,000 settlement offer and sought $1.7-million in the malpractice case against Drs. David P. Wilcher and George Besser, East Pasco Emergency Consultants Inc. and emergency room provider EMSA Limited Partnership. After deliberating less than two hours, the jury of three men and three women found no negligence by either doctor or the emergency room companies that hired them and awarded Wojcik nothing. The lengthy testimony involved six attorneys, medical experts flown in from Boston and Los Angeles, stacks of medical records, videotaped surveillance, a private investigator, and three bags of mulch as both sides tried to sway the jury. Wojcik's attorneys said the woman, formerly of Dade City, was suffering from the worst headache of her life in 1995 when Wilcher at East Pasco Medical Center's emergency room diagnosed her with a sinus infection and twice sent her away with painkillers and antibiotics. When she did not get better, she went to Brooksville Regional Hospital with the same symptoms, and Besser ordered a similar treatment, plaintiff's attorney Riley Allen said. After a week, she passed out and a doctor discovered she was suffering from a rare, fungal form of meningitis, an inflammation of the membrane surrounding the brain. Allen said doctors were so fixated on Wilcher's diagnosis of a sinus infection that they did not follow protocol and seek out the true root of the problem. Defense attorneys said the doctors did everything they could, and there was no way they could have known Wojcik was suffering from a disease so rare it was considered a once-in-two-lifetimes discovery. Wojcik was hospitalized for weeks and had a shunt permanently implanted in her brain to relieve pressure, Allen said. She lost sight in her left eye, required months of rehabilitation to learn to walk again, suffered enough brain damage to significantly lower her IQ and has been unable to work since her illness, he told jurors. The defense questioned Wojcik's claims and had a private investigator film her hoisting sacks of mulch after she said she was unable to endure physical activity. Attorneys for both sides brought in mulch and debated the weight of the mulch, dry and wet. Wojcik said she was stunned by Friday's verdict. "I just can't believe it," she said. Her attorney said he planned to appeal and would aim for a new trial. Attorney Monty Warren, who represented Besser, said his client was especially gratified to win his case. The victory comes exactly 30 years to the day after Besser and his family escaped communist Hungary and fled to Italy. "It's a great day for the justice system" Warren said. "It feels so great to be able to show Dr. Besser that the American justice system really does work." Warren said the defense offered the $350,000 settlement only out of caution, because no one can predict what might happen in a jury room. He said that because the settlement was offered in good faith and was rejected, defense attorneys would be asking the court to force Wojcik and her attorneys to pay the entire cost of the defense. Jurors declined to discuss their verdict.
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From today's Pasco Times |
