MOBILE, Ala – Springhill Medical Center has been ordered to pay a $10 million judgment by the Alabama Supreme Court, in relation to a wrongful death lawsuit. This is the largest amount ever affirmed by the Alabama Supreme Court in a single wrongful death lawsuit.
The Mobile County jury verdict for Jay West’s family was upheld. According to a statement from law firm Cunningham Bounds, West was at his cabinet shop on June 14, 2014, using a table saw when he accidentally cut the tip of his left thumb.
He drove himself to SMC, where doctors were able to surgically repair his thumb. Following the procedure, a surgeon wrote West a prescription for Percocet for pain and also ordered up to 4 milligrams of IV Dilaudid in case the Percocet did not control the pain, according to the statement.
West was then transferred to the hospital’s orthopedic floor for the night and was scheduled to go home on June 15. However, within 10 hours after surgery, West was found dead in his hospital room. The statement said that West’s nurse had given him four milligrams of IV Dilaudid and less than two hours later she gave him another four milligrams.
After the second dose, attorneys claim West was not monitored by anyone on the nursing staff. Based on guidelines set in the Sentinel Event Alert, a published alert from the Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations about the safe use of opioids, West should have been identified as being at “high-risk for opioid-induced depression,” according to the statement.
The attorneys for the West family claimed that SMC did not implement any safety measures nor “provide any training to its nursing staff on how to protect its patients from the known fatal dangers of opioid-induced respiratory depression.”
Brian Duncan, one of the attorneys who represented the West family, expressed his appreciation for the dedication and bravery demonstrated by every juror involved in the case.
Mrs. West was relieved to finally receive justice for her husband’s tragic and entirely avoidable death after a nine-year journey.
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