PORT ANGELES — The University of Washington will not appeal a $1.57 million medical malpractice verdict reached by a King County Superior Court jury and awarded to a Port Angeles carpenter and his wife.
John Pluard, 56, lost the use of his left hand and suffered permanent damage to his left arm in February 2011 due to negligence after a Harborview Medical Center resident failed to properly diagnose Pluard’s injuries, the jury decided.
Pluard was airlifted to the Seattle hospital Feb. 2, 2011, after falling 16 feet from scaffolding onto concrete at the work site of a Port Angeles boatbuilding company.
The University of Washington runs Harborview.
On Monday, a King County Superior Court jury awarded Pluard $1.3 million in economic and non-economic damages and his wife, Lisa Pluard, $275,000 in non-economic damages.
“We are not appealing,” UW Medicine spokeswoman Tina Mankowski said Wednesday in an email.
In an earlier email following the verdict, Mankowski disputed the jurors’ decision.
“We believe our care was not negligent, but we respect the jury’s verdict,” she said.
Personal injury lawyer Nathan Roberts of Tacoma said Pluard, who would not be interviewed for this article, had “significant pain in his arm and no one came to see him for 6½ hours” on Feb. 3, 2011, Pluard’s second night at Harborview.
Deformed limb
Resultant surgeries “have left him with a useless and grotesquely deformed limb,” according to Pluard’s complaint.
“The jury found that that delay was not acceptable,” Roberts said Wednesday.
Roberts said Lisa Pluard had, without success, asked repeatedly for several hours for a doctor to examine her husband the night of Feb. 3, 2011.
“[The Pluards] were happy the jury saw it for what it was and sent the correct message to Harborview that that level of care in not acceptable,” Roberts said.
Roberts said Pluard’s left arm now “serves as a helper” to stabilize objects while he grips with his right hand but he can’t, for example, grip a steering wheel with his left hand.
Not working
For the past four years, Pluard has not worked.
Roberts said Pluard’s long-term goal is to start a charter fishing service to primarily serve disabled individuals.
“That would give him a chance to be back in the outdoors,” he said.
Pluard fractured his leg and left elbow when he fell.
His leg was repaired Feb. 3.
Compartment syndrome
That night, he developed compartment syndrome, according to court documents.
The condition occurs when swelling compresses muscles, nerves and blood vessel within a compartment of the body — in Pluard’s case, his left arm.
The compressed blood vessels cannot deliver oxygen, leading to the destruction of nerves and muscles if untreated for more than six hours, according to court documents.
Court documents gave the following time line:
At about 7:45 p.m. Feb. 3, Lisa Pluard asked that her husband be examined by a doctor.
The nurse notified Dr. Courtney O’Donnell, then a first-year orthopedic resident.
O’Donnell did not examine Pluard until 2:24 a.m. Feb. 4 and failed to correctly diagnose his malady when she examined him at about 6 a.m.
In the interim, Pluard was given morphine, which masked the pain, according to court documents.
During a 7 a.m. examination by a supervising surgeon, it was discovered that Pluard’s left hand was completely numb.
At 9 a.m., to relieve the pressure in his arm, fibrous tissue enclosing a muscle or organ is cut to relieve pressure resulting from loss of circulation.
Roberts said in an email that the jury found that O’Donnell, who no longer is at the University of Washington, committed malpractice by failing to respond to Pluard’s complaints of pain.
Pluard’s lawsuit also alleged that the University of Washington was negligent in improperly supervising and training first-year residents on its orthopedic surgery trauma service such as O’Donnell, then an R-1 intern.
Trial evidence showed that the University was relying on R-1 interns such as O’Donnell to provide overnight coverage that required them to work shifts of more than 24 hours and be responsible for 20 to 60 patients at a time.
In an emailed statement, the university rejected Pluard’s claim of negligence.
“We are very sorry for this patient’s injury caused by a fall at his workplace, and do not believe the resident’s work hours were a factor in his care,” Mankowski said.
“The resident was working as part of a team and was working within the allowed hours at the time of his care.
“Mr. Pluard had an unusual presentation, which made a diagnosis extremely difficult.”
In its defense brief, the University contended that “there is no objective test for compartment syndrome” and that Pluard failed to show “classic signs” of the condition, such as pain out of proportion to his injures.
O’Donnell, who works at Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora, Colo., could not be reached for comment Thursday.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
