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Owen, Reading Trial Win

Andy Owen and Melissa Reading obtained a defense verdict for a family practitioner in Athens, Georgia, after a two-week trial ending on October 9, 2009. The doctor had treated the patient while on call for the patient's primary care physician. The patient presented to the ER with complaints of altered mental status and abdominal pain, and a history of repeated presentations to the healthcare system for severe headaches. Several days after the doctor treated the patient in the ER and admitted him to the hospital, the patient was diagnosed with cryptococcal meningitis, a rare fungal infection that many family practice doctors do not see in their careers.

Plaintiff alleged that the family practitioner should have performed a spinal tap on the patient due to his past history of severe headaches. The defense was able to show that the patient did not present at any time before diagnosis with typical symptoms that would cause a physician to suspect meningitis, such as a stiff neck or fever accompanying his headache. Further, at the time the family practice doctor saw him in the hospital, he was heavily medicated. The doctor assessed and treated any complaints he could elicit on physical examination. By the time the medication wore off enough to assess the patient's mental status and determine if he had any headache complaint, the patient had no symptoms. The defense also presented an expert in infectious disease who explained that, even if the patient's illness had been diagnosed several weeks before he even presented to the ER, the treatment would more likely than not been unable to affect his outcome.

After six hours of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict in favor of the family practice doctor, as well as the patient's primary care physician, also a family practice doctor, and a consulting neurologist.