$837,000 settlement for medical malpractice for a physician’s negligent failure to rule out the migration of an IVC filter that caused abdominal perforation and bleeding resulting in death. The plaintiff’s spouse retained the Sweeney Law Firm to pursue a claim for wrongful death.

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Dave Farnbauch sits down with ABC’s INsight to talk about whether Indiana residents who have been victims of Medical Malpractice have access to the legal system. Unfortunately, there are many barriers that can prevent a case from going to trial. 

You can read the full transcript below, or access a PDF of the transcript.

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Charity: Well, we’re here today with Dave Farnbauch to talk about whether patients who have been harmed by substandard medical care can have compensation for what’s happened to them in the legal system. So, do victims of medical malpractice have a way to seek compensation if they’ve been harmed by this substandard medical care? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, that’s sort of a complicated question in the sense that some people have access to the legal system when they are the victim of medical malpractice. And, unfortunately some victims of medical malpractice as a practical matter really don’t have access to the legal system. Let me explain why that is. Medical malpractice cases are such that they, in our state, they have to go through a medical review panel process. They involve a significant investment of time, money, and energy. 

Dave Farnbauch: In particular, these cases require that in order to pursue them in a legal case, you have to have expert testimony. We have to get medical doctors and various experts to testify that there was a breach of standard of care, to testify about the damages. The reality is to hire medical experts for a medical malpractice case can be very expensive. 

Charity: Sure. 

Dave Farnbauch: So, when we screen cases, we make decisions about which cases we’re going to take in. We have to make a decision about whether the patient’s damages and harm are sufficiently severe that we can afford as a practical matter to invest all this money and time and energy that’s required to pursue a case, so that it will justify the investment of that time, money and energy into the end result, which is the damage award. 

Dave Farnbauch: There’s many patients who are malpracticed upon. For example, we get lots of calls about dental injuries and dental harm, or cases that involve short hospitalizations, or really bad things that happen to people, but they’re short term. So, they call our office and they make an inquiry about whether we can pursue a case. It sounds like there was definitely malpractice involved, but we have to tell these unfortunate patients that there’s just simply nothing that we can do as lawyers to right that wrong and try to pursue financial compensation, because the harm isn’t sufficiently severe. 

Charity: Right. So, are there features of Indiana’s law that make it more difficult for those patients who have the smaller, more modest medical malpractice claims to access the legal system? 

Dave Farnbauch: Yes. The most prominent obstacle that people have in Indiana, consumers have to pursuing a small to midsize medical malpractice case, is this thing that we’ve had since 1975 called the medical review panel system. Before a consumer can bring a medical malpractice case in a court of law, we have to take the case through a medical review panel consisting of three physicians. The parties have to pay for those doctors that are part of the medical review panel. That panel’s system or that process can take, usually it takes a year, a year and a half, can take up to two years. 

Dave Farnbauch: So that’s a whole layer of additional time, money, and energy, and cost that makes it very difficult for somebody just to pursue a simple, straightforward medical malpractice case where the damages are relatively small or a midsize type medical malpractice case. 

Charity: It’s almost like you have to do it twice. 

Dave Farnbauch: It’s almost like, to have a medical malpractice case in Indiana, you better have some very serious injuries or… the reality is you better be deceased or lawyers are going to take a hard look at the case and decide whether it’s something that’s feasible to prosecute. 

Charity: Well, if you believe you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice, Sweeney Law Firm will talk to you about it, will consult with you. All you have to do is give them a call, 420-3137.

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Dave Farnbauch sits down with ABC’s INsight to talk about nursing care and the role that nurses play in keeping patients safe. Cases of medical malpractice are often brought against doctors and hospitals, but are nurses ever liable as well?

You can read the full transcript below, or access a PDF version of the transcript.

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Charity: Well, welcome back. We’re here with Dave Farnbauch. Today’s topic is nursing care, and the role that nurses play in keeping patients safe. We’ve talked over the years a lot with you and Dr. King about medical malpractice and the cases you’ve brought against hospitals and doctors, but I’m curious about nurses. Are they ever brought into these lawsuits, and honestly, are they ever sued personally for medical malpractice? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, that’s a great question. I think a lot of people wonder when we have lawsuits against the hospital, or doctor, or doctors and hospitals as part of a medical malpractice lawsuit, are the nurses sort of dragged into these cases, or are the nurses sued personally for their involvement in a patient’s care? And the answer to that question is, frequently nurses and their conduct are involved in a particular lawsuit that stems from patient care at a hospital. I would say it’s very rare that we sue the nurses personally, that they’re named defendants in a case. And the reason for that is because the hospital is legally responsible for the nurse’s conduct, so it’s not necessary to name nurses individually as defendants in a lawsuit. 

Charity: So how are they brought into the cases? What is their role in the medical malpractice case? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, there’s a couple of different ways. One way is pretty apparent, which is there’s an allegation that the nurses failed to do something that they were supposed to do as part of their normal nursing protocols, or they failed to carry out the physician’s orders with regard to that patient. There’s a reason that nurses are tasked with continually monitoring vital signs, doing neurological checks. Because when you’re in a hospital and under certain settings, if you don’t do those checks in a timely manner and a patient starts to deteriorate, that delay in checking on the patient’s condition and bringing a doctor in can be important in causing a patient’s death, or injuries, or whatever. So we frequently allege that nurses were negligent in doing their job. 

Dave Farnbauch: Another way that they’re brought into these cases is they have the most contact with patients. They’re the ones that are there at bedside with patients, so they can become critical witnesses about what actually happened when a patient started to deteriorate. Where was the doctor? Did you try to page the doctor? Did you go up what we call the chain of command? Oftentimes in a hospital setting a patient will start to deteriorate, and a nurse will become concerned that a patient isn’t receiving the necessary physician care. So what they’re required to do, the way they’re trained, is to go up the chain of command. Go get ahold of a charge nurse, go get ahold of a hospitalist, bring somebody in a timely manner to attend to this patient before something really bad happens. 

Charity: So a nurse then goes up the chain of command, are they then liable if there’s medical malpractice? 

Dave Farnbauch: No. A nurse isn’t necessarily liable, but what we do check on is whether the nurse took the appropriate steps and they went up the appropriate chain of command to try to bring somebody in to provide care to that patient. So once again, most of the time nurses are not the ones that we target as defendants, but there are occasions when we allege that the nurses didn’t do their job properly and that resulted in harm to the patient. 

Charity: Well, if you believe that you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice and you want to talk about it, Sweeney Law Firm will consult with you on your case. All you have to do is give them a call, 420-3137. We’ll be right back.

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Dave Farnbauch sits down with ABC’s INsight to talk about what families can do to keep their loved ones safe in a nursing home. The secret? Check their skin. 

You can read the full transcript below, or access a PDF version of the transcript.

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Charity: Well, welcome back. I’m here with Dave Farnbauch and today we’re going to talk about what families can do to keep their loved ones safe in a nursing home and as it pertains to their skin, really. Why is it important that we keep an eye on our loved one’s skin in the nursing home? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, the reason I think that there needs to be an emphasis by families or that they need to keep an eye out for what happens with their loved one’s skin is because of the risk of a couple of different things that happen with elderly people in nursing homes that are bed bound. One is what we call pressure ulcers or pressure sores and another condition they can develop, it’s known as a deep tissue injury, which is sort of a variation of a pressure ulcer or a pressure sore when they develop a wound underneath the surface of their skin. 

Charity: Let’s tell people what are pressure ulcers or pressure sores. 

Dave Farnbauch: Pressure ulcers, Charity, develop when a person who is primarily bed bound or confined to a chair or whatever, when the quality of their tissue is such, in their age and their tissue quality is such that when they are laying in bed for a long period of time or they are putting weight on one of their extremities, a common area is the heel or their elbows, but the ones that are particularly problematic are the ones in the hip area. What we call the coccyx, right above their hips where they’re laying in a bed. That pressure that’s exerted from their weight that is put down on their skin up against the mattress, that tends to compromise the circulation and the blood. Then in turn, it will cause a wound to develop from the pressure. 

Charity: You brought along, you’ve got this visual aid that kind of shows us where the most common points or sites for pressure sores are. 

Dave Farnbauch: Right. Yeah, so up on the screen, on the screen right now, Charity, we’re looking at the most common areas where patients can develop pressure ulcers. The next thing that we’re going to show on the screen is I talked about before the risks that a bed bound patient will develop a pressure ulcer in their coccyx. These are the ones that are particularly problematic because these can develop very quickly. If a patient is not turned on a regular basis, they can develop these wounds and these wounds, they can develop a tunneling type of a feature where they become very large and very open. I’ve been involved in cases where, this is no exaggeration, I would be able to put my fist inside a wound that developed on the coccyx because that wound is tunneling down inside the patient. The obvious risk there is a patient who has that kind of wound, it can become infected and then if it becomes infected then you can develop sepsis and as soon as you develop sepsis, it can be a very touch and go situation to save your life because sepsis can cause multi-system organ failure. 

Charity: In general as we age, these are not things that we can battle as easily or quickly. Those infections are not something we can do. What can families do to protect their loved ones from these wounds? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, the biggest thing that I’ve noticed over the years, I’ve been doing these cases for a long time, is the common theme that runs among families when they come to see us about these wounds is they visit their loved ones on a regular basis. They just never have a look at their backside. They don’t look at their heels, they’re covered up. So what I always tell people is if you’re going to go visit a loved one, insist that your loved one be sort of rolled on their side or rolled on their stomach. Even though the nurses are telling you there’s no pressure ulcers, their skin looks good, their heels look good. Insist as the family member that you have a look at their skin, so you can verify that they aren’t developing any reddened areas, aren’t developing wounds because if you have a look at those and see that they’re not addressed, you can take it up with the charge nurse or the director of nursing and say, “Look, I have some concerns. I see that my loved one is starting to develop some pressure ulcers.” 

Charity: It’s so important for us to be advocates for our loved ones. If you’ve had an issue with neglect or care in a nursing home, all you have to do is give Sweeney Law Firm a call, 420-3137. We’ll be right back.

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Dave Farnbauch sits down with ABC’s INsight to explain the impact of using social media when you have an active PI (Personal Injury) claim. 

You can read the full transcript below, or access a PDF version of the transcript.

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Charity: Well. Welcome back to INsight. We’re here with Dave Farnbauch today. We’re going to talk about the impact of social media when you have a PI claim. So you have a PI claim, are insurance companies and other attorneys going to use your social media, or what you’ve done on social media in your PI claim? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, there’s no question that it’s probably going to be one of the first things that an insurance company does in terms of their investigation of a new claim, because insurance companies and defense lawyers have come to the realization that there’s a significant percentage of the population that really do put a big portion of their personal life out there on the internet for public consumption. So it’s really a low cost, easily accessible way to get oppo research on a plaintiff that is going to be making a personal injury claim. 

Charity: Sure. It can be a treasure trove, I am sure. 

Dave Farnbauch: Right. I mean, people don’t realize that, and we’re not talking about just Facebook, we’re talking about Twitter. There’s all kinds of different forms of social media, just an internet Google search that they can do. YouTube. I can tell you that over the years I’ve been involved in numerous cases where we’ve gone in a deposition and midway through the deposition a defense lawyer will trot out printouts of different social media and put that in front of somebody that’s making a personal injury claim. And it can become very problematic to try to explain away things that are on social media posts. 

Charity: What are they looking for? So we were talking about earlier, my husband and daughter were in a car accident. I posted a picture. They were in a car accident. Are they looking for that nugget? Are they looking for somebody saying something different than what they’re saying now? What are they looking for when they’re researching? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, I mean, I think number one, it gives them a lot of information about who they’re dealing with. So there’s just a lot of information that will be sort of told, tell the story about what kind of person you are by your social media presence. But I think mostly what they’re looking for are instances through your posts that show some inconsistency with what you’re trying to portray in a lawsuit. I’m injured, I’m hurt, I’m disabled, I’m not able to work, I’m in pain. And then contrast that with what they find on your social media posts. If you’ve got party pics, if you’re taking pictures, you’re on an ATV and you’re jumping over logs in your ATV, that is just ironclad proof that you are not as disabled and hurt as you are claiming in your lawsuit. 

Charity: So what about privacy settings? You know you can set, I think, you can set Facebook and Instagram, I don’t know about Twitter as far as privacy settings. Does that protect you? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well it really doesn’t, unfortunately. First of all, there are companies that are out there that you can hire that have their channels to be able to get social media. Forensic firms that will go back in time and be able to reconstruct what you’ve put on your social media, whether you’ve tried to delete it, or you have privacy settings or whatever. So if an insurance company really wants to get their hands on your social media accounts, they have their channels to do that. And the other thing is, too, is they can send subpoenas in the lawsuit. If they can make a case that if they get evidence that you do make posts, and you do communicate with your friends and neighbors, and so forth on social media, you can actually get what we call a request for production from the other side requesting that you produce that in a lawsuit. 

Charity: Well, you just brought up one thing that I’m always curious about. What if you delete it? I’ve always told my kids don’t put things on social media because even if you delete it, it lives on an infamy. Is that true? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, you can delete it, but that’s something that can get you in trouble in a lawsuit because there’s a concept in the law of evidence known as spoliation, where if you knowingly or intentionally take evidence in a civil case and you get rid of the evidence. You destroy it, or whatever. And, of course, pictures or posts that you made are potentially relevant to your level of injury, or disability, or whatever. If you take that evidence and destroy it intentionally to try to prevent the other side from getting access to that, then potentially you can get in trouble in your civil case because of spoliation of evidence. 

Charity: Oh, great advice when it comes to social media. If you have a possible PI claim that you’d like Sweeney Law Firm to help you with, they would love to discuss it with you. All you have to do is give them a call today, 420-3137. We’ll be right back.

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Dave Farnbauch sits down with ABC’s INsight to discuss awarding Punitive Damages in Personal Injury cases. 

You can read the full transcript below, or access a PDF version of the transcript.

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Charity: Well, welcome back. We’re here today with Dave Farnbauch and we’re going to talk about punitive damages in personal injury cases. Tell me, what are punitive damages? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, there’s basically two different types of damages theoretically in a personal injury case. One would be compensatory damages. Those are the normal damages that you would think of. Medical expenses, lost wages, pain and suffering, impairment of the enjoyment of life, those sorts of things to compensate you for an injury. In cases where there’s particularly egregious conduct, there’s a thing that’s known as a category of damages known as punitive damages, and punitive damages are intended to punish the wrongdoer to deter the wrongdoer and others from engaging in similar bad conduct in the future. 

Charity: In Indiana, are there any limits or caps on punitive damages? 

Dave Farnbauch: There are damages, I mean punitive damage caps in Indiana as part of our tort reform measures in the early nineties. The Indiana legislature passed a law that essentially said that punitive damages are capped in a civil case at three times the amount of the compensatory damage award or $50,000, whichever is higher. 

Charity: Are these punitive damages, these punishment damages, are they common in the state of Indiana? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, unfortunately punitive damage awards are almost nonexistent in the state of Indiana. The reason that punitive damage awards are non-existent is because as part of that same tort reform measure back in the early nineties, the Indiana legislature passed a law that says that 75% of a punitive damage award goes to the state of Indiana instead of the person that suffered the harm. The other 25% that goes to the victim or the plaintiff, the person that recovers the punitive damages, those damages are taxed. Whereas a normal award for compensatory damages for pain and suffering, medical expenses, lost wages, that type of a damage award is not a taxable event. The long and the short of it is most litigants in a personal injury case do not seek punitive damages because they don’t want 75% of the award to go to the state of Indiana. 

Charity: Sure. What about a wrongful death case. Are there punitive damages or could there be punitive damages in a wrongful death case? 

Dave Farnbauch: Unfortunately, there’s not. In Indiana and it’s been that way for quite some time, there is no ability, the common law is such that the plaintiff cannot recover punitive damages in a wrongful death case. There are many injustices every year in Indiana where, for example, I’m just going to cite this as an example, you have a truck driver who might be intoxicated who causes an injury or a death under the influence of alcohol, egregious circumstances, et cetera. Punitive damages, damages to punish that trucking company or that truck driver are not available in the state of Indiana in a wrongful death case. 

Charity: Seems very odd. If you have a personal injury claim or you think you might and you just want to know what to do about it, Sweeney Law Firm would be happy to consult with you and talk to you about that. All you have to do is give them a call. 420-3137. We’ll be right back.

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Dave Farnbauch sits down with ABC’s INsight to talk about the National Practitioner Data Bank. 

You can read the full transcript below, or access a PDF version of the transcript.

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Charity: Welcome back. We’re here with Dave Farnbauch, and today we’re going to talk about the National Practitioners Data Bank. So what is that? What’s the National Practitioners Data Bank? 

Dave Farnbauch: Well, Charity, the National Practitioners Data Bank was established back in the mid-80s as a way… It was established by the federal government. It’s actually a Department of Health and Human Services agency that established this internet repository, or database, of information about medical practitioners that could be accessed by a number of different entities, so that we would have information about medical providers. So that a medical provider who maybe got into trouble in one state could, before the establishment of this National Practitioners Data Bank, they could move to another state. And it would be very difficult to sort of reconstruct or investigate what kind of a history that practitioner had, because there was no database and information where you could do research on whether they had had a number of malpractice lawsuits. They had had issues with their medical license, they’d lost their hospital privileges. So it was very difficult to find a way to investigate that. 

Dave Farnbauch: So Congress decided to address that by creating this repository of information where hospitals, medical licensing boards, health insurance companies, a variety of different entities could go to the internet, make a request on a particular medical provider and in essence get their whole malpractice claim history, their licensure history, whether their hospital privileges had been revoked. So that they could have that information to make decisions about whether you want to add a particular doctor to your hospital staff. Do you want to add that doctor to your group? Do we need information as law enforcement about, if somebody gets into trouble in this state, can we find out whether that provider got in trouble in other states for doing things that maybe run afoul of the law or the rules and regulations governing medical providers. 

Charity: So then I assume the intent and the purpose of that really is to protect the end user. You and I, the people who are consuming the services of these physicians. 

Dave Farnbauch: Sure. I mean having that kind of database available to be able to track medical providers and their history does ultimately protect the consumer. But it also sort of provides for an orderly way for people within the healthcare industry to make decisions about who to hire, and once again what their history is. 

Charity: So who can access this information?

Dave Farnbauch: Well, basically the long and short answer to that would be people within the healthcare industry. Hospitals, health insurance plans, as I mentioned before, entities that govern medical providers like state licensing boards, law enforcement, they can make those requests. But the public, John Q Public, cannot get on the internet and access that information for obvious reasons. Because this is something that I would say that most medical providers don’t want out there for public consumption. 

Charity: If we go to a physician that is part of a group, we would know then that their employer had the opportunity to have access to that information. 

Dave Farnbauch: I would say right now there’s a lot of mandatory reporting to the National Practitioners Data Bank and there’s a lot of mandatory checking that must be done by different entities before somebody’s hired, or decisions are made about staff privileges and stuff like that. So it’s a two way street. The medical profession can get information, but they’re also required to disclose information when things happen. For example, in our world, being medical malpractice attorneys, when there’s a medical malpractice payment made on behalf of a physician or a hospital, those payments are reported to the National Practitioners Data Bank. 

Charity: It’s good that there are those checks and balances. If you believe that you have been a victim of medical malpractice, you can call Sweeney Law Firm and they’ll walk you through that and see if you do have a case. Give them a call at 420- 3137. We’ll be right back.

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$1,100,000 settlement in a medical malpractice case against a surgeon for failing to timely diagnose and treat a bowel perforation resulting in sepsis and an ensuing brain injury. 

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$1.167 million settlement for medical malpractice for a hospital’s negligent failure to monitor an epidural drain following lumbar surgery. The plaintiff sustained permanent nerve damage that severely impacted the function of his lower extremities and caused a chronic pain syndrome.

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On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law. The legislation was inspired by husband, father, and Army Sgt. First Class Richard Stayskal. For months, Stayskal had struggled with severe breathing issues. He decided to get help at the Womack Army Medical Center in North Carolina, but was told it was just a mild case of pneumonia. Unfortunately, he actually had stage four terminal lung cancer. Their misdiagnosis allowed his tumor to nearly double in size and spread to several different organs. 

Learn more about his story.

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