Fieger Firm Wins $30 Million for Family of Physician
August 11, 2006

 


LEXINGTON, S.C. -- Fieger, Fieger, Kenney & Johnson secured a $30 million verdict for the estate of a South Carolina physician who died hours after a routine operation.
The verdict is the highest jury award for a medical malpractice case in the state’s history.

According to Geoffrey Fieger, Sheikh, 58, entered the Lexington Medical Center for a double knee replacement. By the following day, Sheikh was dead.

“The hospital and anesthesiologist gave Sheikh a lethal cocktail of narcotics, that caused him to stop breathing and turned a routine surgery into a tragedy. Had they properly monitored my client, he would have lived,” Fieger said. “Worse than that, the hospital then embarked on a massive cover-up to hide their mistake.”

Original hospital records, including Sheik’s X-rays and charts, disappeared.

Under Judge Diane Goodstein’s instructions, the jury inferred that the destroyed evidence reflected negatively on the hospital.


 
 
Lexington Medical Center lawyer Weldon Johnson was quoted in South Carolina’s newspaper “The State” as saying the case marked the first jury verdict against Lexington Medical Center in memory.

After three days of deliberation, the jury found the hospital, along with anesthesiologist Dr. Gail Capell, responsible for Sheikh’s death.

Ironically, Sheikh was a member of the Lexington Medical Center’s board and chief of the hospital orthopedics staff.
Other medical malpractice lawyers in South Carolina were astonished by Fieger’s courtroom win, according to an Aug. 12 article in “The State.”

“Getting a Lexington County jury to give a $30 million verdict is a once-in-a-century happening against a hospital,” Columbia trial attorney Dick Harpootlian was quoted as saying. “Even if the award is reduced, it’s a huge black eye for the hospital.”