On June 13, a jury in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas returned a $3 million verdict for Dave and Janey Motz. Mr. and Mrs. Motz were represented by SS&L partners Dennis R. Lansdowne, Peter J. Brodhead, and Nicholas DiCello in this medical malpractice case.
In 2009, Dave went to Summit Pain Specialists Inc. because of his debilitating back and leg pain. He was prescribed a series of three trans-foraminal epidural spinal injections over the course of a month. Although he got no relief from either the first or second set of injections, the Pain Clinic urged Dave to return for a third set of injections. Following this third set of injections, Dave was rendered partially paraplegic.
Dave was never advised of the risks of spinal cord injury and national and international experts testified that there was no medical justification for performing the third set of injections. Testimony revealed that Summit Pain and the physician who treated Dave routinely scheduled patients for three sets of injections without re-gard to whether the patient was showing any response to the injections. The evidence also revealed that Sum-mit Pain put up to two hundred patients a day through the clinic even though only three doctors were on site. One of the co-owners of Summit Pain Specialists even boasted at trial that the Clinic had over twelve thousand active patients.
The jury found that the treating physician and Summit Pain Specialists, Inc. were negligent in the manner in which the injections were performed and also that they failed to adequately explain the risks and benefits of the procedures. The jury verdict contained $2 million for the cost of care Dave will need for the rest of his life.
