Insurer must pay $13.6M after hospital death

Hospital settles medical malpractice suits with two families for $5M

The Times Leader - Wilkes-Barre, PA

Testimony continues in a suit filed against Mercy Hospital by the wife of a patient who died.

By DAVID WEISS

WILKES-BARRE - Moments after doctors tried operating on Frank Thornton, two nurses said they clearly saw signs that Thornton's breathing tube was pumping air into his esophagus instead of his windpipe, the nurses testified Thursday.

Nurses Karen Licata and Deborah Lisman also said they thought the mistake would have been placed into the 72-year-old man's chart and relayed to his family. But instead, the doctors and Mercy Hospital never made that part of Thornton's chart, the family attorney said.

Attorney Joe Quinn said the blunder caused by Thornton's operating doctors, Esther McKenzie and Walter Boris, in August 2000 led to his irreversible brain damage and death.

The nurses testified in the second day of the Luzerne County jury trial. Dorothy Thornton, administrator to her husband's estate, filed suit against the hospital in August.

The lawsuit says doctors placed Thornton under anesthetic to begin a surgery. But when they put him on a ventilator to keep him breathing, the doctors placed the breathing tube down his esophagus instead of his windpipe, the suit says.

That forced his body to go without oxygen for six to 10 minutes, leading to the brain damage and death, Quinn says.

Quinn says the case is full of deceit, lies and negligence. And the hospital's failure to tell Thornton's family about the incident and the error ignores a patient's right to know.

Under questioning from Quinn, Licata told the jury she noticed Thornton's heart rate drop because of inadequate ventilation soon after the doctors placed the tube inside Thornton.

And Lisman soon noticed Thornton's stomach swelling during the procedure, and made her observation known to others in the operating room, she said.

"To the best of my recollection, I said it aloud," Lisman said.

"Did you say it to intervene on behalf of a patient who was in danger?" Quinn asked.

"Correct," she replied.

The doctors later tried using another tube through Thornton's nose to remove air from the stomach. That could not be done because the other tube was already obstructing the esophagus, Quinn has argued.

But McKenzie, in taped testimony played Thursday, refused to accept responsibility in Thornton's death.

"I cannot and will not answer that question," she said.

Testimony will resume before Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. at 8:15 a.m. today.