Note: Confidential settlement, details may not be fully disclosed.
What was supposed to be a routine surgical procedure at a Washington State hospital quickly turned to tragedy when a Seattle-area hospital's medication error resulted in the wrongful death of a young boy. Nursing staff allegedly sent a special needs teenage boy home with a dangerous and powerful narcotic drug that eventually took his life.
The boy’s mother initially took her son to the medical facility for a routine procedure that required sedation and pain medicine via an IV drip. The procedure went as planned and because the boy’s condition meant oral medication was not an option, doctors decided to prescribe a pain reliever patch that would ease the boy’s pain in the days following the procedure.
What the boy’s mother did not know was that the drug prescribed by the doctors at the hospital was a powerful and dangerous narcotic that even the drug’s manufacturer said should only be used in very limited circumstances. To make things worse, the boy was prescribed the highest possible concentration of the drug.
The Worst Kind of Medical Mistake
The teenage boy had no history of using narcotic drugs and therefore was most certainly not opioid-tolerant at the time of the prescription. The procedure that he underwent did not leave him in chronic pain, but rather in manageable intermittent pain. Despite these obvious red flags, the hospital still prescribed the medication and failed to warn the family of any possible risks or side effects.
Several medical experts were hired as expert witnesses to testify for the case, one of whom went as far as to say the hospital’s error was the most egregious medical mistake he had witnessed in more than 25 years as a consultant for medical negligence cases.
Initially, the hospital denied any responsibility for the wrongful death of the boy, and claimed the incident was a result of a series of errors made by several different people. Attorney Chris Davis of Davis Law Group, P.S. was eventually able to successfully negotiate a $1.6 million settlement with the hospital, and the terms of the settlement required that all parties involved in the settlement remain anonymous.
Statute Of Limitations