Chicago Man Files Medical Malpractice LawsuitOn July 28, 2009, a man claims doctors operated on the wrong knee during replacement surgery at a west suburban hospital filed a medical malpractice lawsuit seeking damages. The plaintiff filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court against Dr. Scott A. Seymore, surgical assistant Lukasz Sidorowicz and the Orthopaedic Associates of Riverside for the May 6, 2008 botched right-knee operation that left him with cartilage damage to his left knee. The plaintiff was admitted to MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn on May 6, 2008 for right knee arthroscopy, right knee partial lateral meniscectomy and right knee ACL reconstruction, the suit said. Seymour and Sidorowicz allegedly prepped the plaintiff's left knee and began performing replacement surgery on his left knee. At some point, however, both the surgeon and surgical assistant realized they were operating on the wrong knee and began removing the surgical instruments and sutured the incisions on his left knee, the suit alleges. The doctors then continued to operate on his right knee, as planned. The five-count medical negligence suit alleges the defendants should have realized they were intended to perform surgery on his right knee and failed to ensure surgery would not be performed on the wrong body part. The suit also claims Seymour and Sidorowicz failed to document in their medical records that they "surgically invaded" the wrong knee. The plaintiff was later diagnosed with chondromalaci patealla to his left knee, a general term indicating damage to the cartilage under your kneecap, according to the MayoClinic Web site. Note: Attorney Thomas Zimmerman filed a medical malpractice lawsuit on behalf of the patient. |
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Mother Loses Child Custody and Visitation — Following a lengthy trial to determine the best interests of the children, a mother going through a divorce lost custody of her children to her husband and she was also denied any visitation with her minor children. We were retained after the trial to appeal the decision. We successfully appealed the trial court's decision denying visitation by demonstrating that visitation would not endanger the children's physical, mental, moral or emotional health, and the appellate court ordered the trial court to fashion appropriate visitation. In this matter, we also filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court on the issue of whether a state court rule violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment where the rule precludes the court from exercising its discretion, in the interest of fundamental fairness, to allow an untimely appeal from a court order terminating a parent's liberty interest to the care and custody of her children.
