Irvine California company to pay $40 million to Heart Patient
A jury has awarded a Washington resident a sum of $40 million in compensation for the damage his heart received during a surgery at the Providence Everett Medical Center in September 2004. The man, Paramjit Singh, checked into the hospital in October 2004 for cardiac bypass surgery. While the surgery was in progress, a monitor malfunctioned and caused the catheter that was in his heart to overheat and caused his heart to get burned. The damage was so severe that Singh needed a heart transplant. Since then, Singh has reportedly been on anti-rejection drugs and has suffered other health problems as a result of the injury.
The monitor in question was manufactured by Edwards Life Sciences Corp. of Irvine, California. This monitor seems to have contained a line of computer code that caused fail-safe devices to be shut off, leading to the overheating of the catheter. Singh’s heart was left practically useless after the injury. His attorneys had hoped for a settlement of $8 million and the jurors haven’t disappointed.
The award includes $8.35 million in punitive damages. Edward Life Sciences Corporation, while they have said they regretted what happened to Mr. Singh and believed that he should be compensated for his injures, claimed that the punitive damages ruling was not called for. According to their attorneys, “This was the only reported injury relating to millions of uses of this device and the problem that caused the issue has been rectified.” Regardless of how many times a device had been used, a severe injury on the scale of the one that occurred in Paramjit’s case calls for a substantial award. Singh’s injuries were hardly the kind to warrant only “sympathy” – he will live out the rest of his life suffering from the effects of a transplant that he didn’t need, and was forced upon him by the faulty medical machinery manufactured by Edwards Life Sciences Corp. Singh suffers from a host of other health problems relating to the heart injury he received, and is on anti-rejection drugs as well. In the light of the seriousness of his injuries, he deserves a major settlement, and the jury seems to have agreed.
Both Edwards Life Sciences Corporation and Providence Hospital were engaged in a blame game before the verdict was announced. Edwards asserted that the injury was caused by a damaged cable supplied by the hospital, while the hospital claimed that the monitor was faulty. The settlement has gone overwhelmingly against Edwards – they will pay 99.9 percent of the amount while Providence hospital will be responsible for 0.1 percent. Edwards will now also have to pay Providence Hospital $310,000 in damages for breaking a contract and fraud.
While Singh may not completely recover from the trauma of what he has been through, this award should take care of his medical bills, which must be substantial at this point. It should also make Edwards pay more attention to their design mechanisms, so they can avoid such gruesome incidents in the future.
