DIED WHILE WAITING IN EMERGENCY ROOM
After he died while in a hospital waiting room, the administrator of Jon V.’s estate brought a wrongful death and medical malpractice case against the hospital defendants.
After the Bronx County Supreme Court denied the defendants’ motion to have the case thrown out, they appealed to the Appellate Division, First Department, which was of the view the denial was wrongfully premised.
The AD1 thought the medical evidence presented below sufficiently demonstrated that the defendants did not depart from “good and accepted [medical] practices” when it failed to diagnose that Jon was suffering from heroin intoxication and did not treat him for an overdose -- while he was in the emergency room waiting area -- since he only exhibited a rash on his arm and had “otherwise normal vital signs.”
And even though the estate’s expert claimed that emergency room patients shouldn’t be permitted to “sleep” while in the waiting area, the AD1 thought that was a “conclusory opinion,” and declined to give it any weight.
Looks like this case is now in permanent repose.
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DECISION