Georgia's Jury Duty Finale

Courts tend to reserve Mondays for other types of court business. The jury reconvened on Tuesday morning. When the jury finally decided all aspects of the verdict, they had quite a list of issues with the suit that had been presented to them.

1.      Discharge instructions said to go back to the ER if she got worse or did not improve. Although she worsened after discharge, she did not go back.

2.      The plaintiff/family member asked another family member living in San Luis, AZ, what they should do about her severe pain, rather than asking a medical professional.

3.      Discharge instructions said to be checked by a physician. She did not see an MD, DO, or chiropractor until about September 13^th. If she was in so much pain, why didn’t she get seen?

4.      She had an appointment to see her physician in October, but did not keep it.

5.      She said that the physician was her family’s doctor. On further questioning, she revealed that she had seen the physician, but when she was younger, so he wasn’t her doctor. That sounded to our juror like he was her doctor.

6.      The chiropractor in his testimony at first said that if he had someone who was having dizziness he would stop treating her and send her to a physician. She continued to have dizziness (Georgia checked his documentation), and he continued to treat her. Therefore he contradicted himself at best, and at worst was not providing care up to his own standard.

7.      When later asked why he continued to treat her even though she had dizziness, the chiropractor said that she was improving. Not a good enough reason.

8.      All the chiropractor would have needed to do was to call the plaintiff’s primary doctor and push to get her seen. That sort of thing is done all the time at doctor’s offices; Georgia knows this from first-hand experience.

9.      The chiropractor began treating her without the standard chiropractic X-rays or even the CT scan.

10.  The chiropractor used a machine (EMS) that puts electrical current into the muscles of the patient. Any treatment with electrical current, whether the EMS machine, or a body fat machine, has not been shown to be safe during pregnancy, therefore standard practice would be not to use it.

11.  When asked about the lien that was put on the plaintiff’s chiropractor account, at first the chiropractor testified that knew nothing of it, since he focuses on treating the patient rather than what the treatment costs. He also said that he runs a small practice, and cannot afford to treat people for free. As a matter of fact, he was charging $500 to testify in court. Later he testified that he does some pro bono work. Georgia could not believe that he would not be keeping careful track of which patients had liens, and which ones were behind on their bills. Therefore, he had to know that he would be paid based on the result of the suit.

12.  During the first or second visit the chiropractor documented that he instructed the plaintiff on home care of putting ice to her neck for 30 minutes every “x” amount of time. Georgia carefully looked all through the documentation for any other home care documented, but it always said “continue same home care”. However, the chiropractor and plaintiff testified that he had taught her some stretching exercises to do at home. The problem is that, as Georgia was taught in nursing school, “if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done”. Therefore, the documentation only showed ice as home care. That was not reasonable and standard care.

13.  Another juror said that it was not reasonable for the chiropractor to omit doing a final exam at the end of treatment. After all, he had done one at the beginning and mid-point of treatment.

14.  Another juror had a problem with the way that the family received a list of three practitioners of some sort from the lawyer. It seemed shady to that juror.

15.  The plaintiff’s lawyer put forth the theory that the dizziness was caused by the pain pills. He showed the receipt for the medications from the pharmacy which showed the side effect of dizziness. The plaintiff said she had not read the receipt. Georgia did not think that was a reasonable excuse, because “may cause dizziness” would have been on the bottle as well.

16.  Knowing that the plaintiff has only been prescribed 20 pain pills, without any refills (the previously mentioned receipt), Georgia asked when she had run out of them. The plaintiff said that they were so strong that she didn’t take them regularly, and ran out of them sometime in October. It seemed to Georgia that the dizziness was caused by something else, because the dizziness stopped before she ran out of the pain pills.

17.  The chiropractor had documented that the plaintiff was having pain 8/10. He did not document anything about it being worse at some times and better at other times, or even intermittent. Therefore, holding to the doctrine of “if it wasn’t documented, it wasn’t done”, it must have been constant.

However, Georgia and one of the other nurses did the math. The hospital used a urine pregnancy test on September 3^rd. It is always in the best interest of the patient to use the most sensitive test available – this one came out negative. The plaintiff found out that she was pregnant on October 4^th, five weeks later. Knowing that over-the-counter pregnancy tests can be accurate as early as 1 week after conception (before a missed period), two nurses independently came to the conclusion that she got pregnant after the accident. The plaintiff’s lawyer also had her testify about when her son was born, which was well within the time period for conception after the accident. The nurses found it difficult to believe that she was both having constantly severe pain and having sex.

The defendant admitted that he caused the accident. The jury had to decide either in favor of the defendant, or, if in favor of the plaintiff, how much would be awarded. The plaintiff’s lawyer did quite the presentation on how they calculated the amount. What were they asking: about $7500 for medical bills, about $3900 for chiropractor bills, and over $11,000 for pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, etc. That came to over $32,000.

With all of the issues they found, the jury decided not to award the total amount that was sought. There was no question about the payment of medical bills. Each juror allowed for that. The sticking point was the chiropractor bill and/or pain and suffering. However each juror arrived at the amount they could live with, the jury decided to give the plaintiff $9,000.

One of the jurors was looking at the plaintiff’s table when the clerk read the verdict. She reported that the plaintiff’s lawyer’s assistant looked shocked at the verdict. The nurses and paramedic decided that if they didn’t like the verdict, they ran the risk of bringing the suit, not to mention empanelling this particular jury.