Medical malpractice suits are a scary thing. They can make us fear going to the hospital, and sometimes they can enrage us to the point that we wonder how the legal system has managed to survive this long (and why people risk becoming doctors at all). These are 15 of the craziest malpractice suits we could find — whichever way they go, they’re definitely worth knowing about.
From Diarrhea to Deaf in One Sitting
When Sue Gonzales went to the hospital with a nasty case of diarrhea, she was expecting to nip the problem in the bud and go home a happier, less-leaky individual. What she got was more than she bargained for; her doctor left an IV of antibiotics running for far too long, and Sue lost her hearing. To make matters worse, Texas laws made it impossible for her to mount a proper malpractice suit against the hospital.
You Were Actually a Woman, but We Fixed You
In a particularly odd case, Christiane Volling was born half a century ago in Germany, but was unfortunate enough to have external genitalia that wasn’t quite definitive enough for the doctors of the time to know that she was, well, a she at all. Christiane was named Thomas, and raised a somewhat awkward boy. When Thomas was 18, he had an operation dealing with his appendix, and the surgeon this time ’round noticed ovaries. Instead of discussing the matter with the then Thomas, the surgeon simply removed the ovaries along with the appendix. It took 30 years for Thomas to finally realize that he was born a she, and Christiane Volling won a hefty award in the German court.
Hacking (out) a Lung
When you’re having chest pains, you normally expect your doctor to spend quite some time going through all the various possibilities when coming up with a diagnosis. In the case of Laurence Ball, that didn’t quite happen. His doctor, serving at NHS Grampian in the UK, leapt directly to lung cancer — and removed an entire lung. Now the man can hardly breathe, much less work, and it’s taken him quite some time to get his case into court.
No, Your Other Right
There’s something very wrong when a hospital’s neurosurgeons manage to operate on the wrong side of a patient’s brain three separate times. That’s exactly what happened in 2007, in a Rhode Island hospital. The first two times it happened, the patients were left a bit rattled, but otherwise OK health-wise. The third time it happened, the patient died within weeks of the surgery, and state health officials were left speechless (and without a defense).
Extreme Vasectomy
Vasectomies are a simple procedure — so simple that you can stop by a doctor’s office on your lunch break and be back in your cubicle before the workday’s out. That’s not quite how it went, however, for Daniel Stalker, who suffered the loss of both his testicles due to a botched vasectomy in the 90s. During the original procedure, Stalker tried telling the surgery staff that the anesthetics weren’t working, and that he felt massive amounts of pain. They didn’t believe him until he doubled over and started vomiting, at which point that stopped the procedure and gave up. One of his testicles had turned black and had swollen to twice its regular size, and the pain didn’t stop. After two solid years of pain, he had to have his testicles removed, and he still had to cope with pain for 12 more years before he could finally get a court-ruling in his favor. He may have received a million British Pounds for compensation, but money can’t fix what he went through.
“Forced” Rectal Exam
This one’s a bit more of a humorous story. Brian Persaud, a construction worker, suffered a head injury on the job and had to be rushed to the hospital. After getting stitched up, the staff had to perform a rectal exam as part of a greater list of tasks necessary to be sure there was no spinal damage. Persaud resisted violently to protect his fierce male identity, and sued the hospital on the grounds that they tried to forcefully insert things into his manhole. He lost the case.
The Love Doctor
James Burt is easily one of the creepiest individuals to ever hold a license to practice medicine. He spent decades operating on women’s genitalia, usually directly after childbirth — and here’s the really sickening part — without telling the patient what he was doing. What he was doing was, in his mind, upgrading the parts that those women were born with. He said at one point that he could change women from “a scared, reluctant little house mouse” to “a horny little house mouse.” His surgeries turned out to be complete hack-jobs, and many women required multiple reconstructive procedures to correct what he had done to them. There was a $21 million suit filed against him, but he wasn’t criminally pursued since he gave up his medical license voluntarily.
Sleeping on the Job
Remember the old X-Files episode that had the doctor go nuts and kill a guy with liposuction? Well, this story isn’t quite so raunchy, but it’s close. Michael Hicks went to Beth Israel to have a few pounds taken off, believing that he was going to spend no longer than 90 minutes (the standard amount of time allotted for liposuction). Unfortunately for Mr. Hicks, his doctor had been neglecting his sleep (and his ethics), and the liposuction procedure lasted for a brutally long 6 hours. The doctor was fired, and a malpractice suit is in the works.
Off (with) the Wrong Foot
You’ve almost surely heard of this one: A Tampa doctor somehow managed to amputate the wrong leg of a 52-year-old. The surgery staff realized what they had done about halfway through the procedure, but by then it was too late and they had to continue removing the leg — and the other one, which truly did need to be amputated. The patient, Willi King, received over $1 million in compensation, and to keep it from happening ever again, it’s not uncommon to have four separate people double check pre-op paperwork and mark the patient’s body with a magic marker.
You Are the Father
In an odd mixup, two people who were hoping to become parents got their wish, but not the way they had in mind. Matthew Hayes and his girl, Nico Swift, went to an Oregon hospital to try artificial insemination in their quest to have a baby. At the same time, another woman was seeking an anonymous sperm donation from the same hospital in the hope that she too could have a child. The hospital screwed up, and Hayes’ sperm was used to inseminate the other woman instead of Nico. To really add insult to injury, anonymous inseminations carry with them the rule that the donor can never have any contact with the mother or child, so Hayes can’t ever see the kid he had been trying to have for so long. He’s got two separate suits riding the court system.
Screwed
This one sounds so ridiculous that it seems like it must be fiction. Dr. Robert Ricketson was in the middle of performing back surgery on Arturo Iturralde when he realized he couldn’t find the titanium rods he needed to complete the procedure. So what’s a guy to do? In this case, old Doc Ricketson decided he’d just grab the screwdriver from the nearby table and hack the handle off of it. A rod’s a rod, right? Wrong. The makeshift “rod” snapped just a few days later, and Iturralde needed several more surgeries to fix the damage — but ended up dying 2 years later. His family was awarded $5.6 million in damages a few years later.
What Was Once a Penis
If you can’t tell by the picture and the title of this one, brace yourself for some gruesome imagery. First thing’s first, never get delicate surgery done in Romania if you have the option of having it done elsewhere. Naum Ciomu, a surgeon in Bucharest, was apparently having a very rough week when he had to operate on Nelu Radonescu’s testicular region. He snapped, took his scalpel, hacked off the unconscious man’s penis, and proceeded to mince it into pieces on the operating table while the nursing staff watched in horror. He then stormed out of the operating room, his rage satisfied. Mr. Radonescu was awarded roughly $120,000 — a pathetic amount of money for the damage done — and $20,000 of that was just surgery cost to have what was left of his penis reconstructed and reattached.
Side Effects May Include Burning
Robbin Reeves was admitted to a hospital in Vancouver in 2005 for a liver transplant, but woke up to find out that not only had his transplant procedure utterly failed, but that his neck and shoulder had been lit on fire at some point while he was unconscious. Apparently, his heart had stopped during the operation, and in the rush to rectify the situation the staff had somehow managed to ignite some disinfecting alcohol that was on his shoulder. His malpractice suit is pending.
Bad Acid Trip
If you’re ever in a situation where you need to get yourself tested for HPV, make sure the nurse or doctor handling the exam knows what they’re doing. William Morrison had to suffer the insufferable so that we could be warned today; when he found out his wife had the virus, he went to get himself checked out. The normal test for that involves applying a very weak, 3-5% solution of acetic acid to the penis. William’s schlong was covered in 72% solution, which caused “severe pain, chemical burns, and long-term physical and psychological injuries” — along with years of nightmares.
The Wrong Hole
This one’s a bit sick. Sarah Wallace went to a Texas hospital to give birth a bit early, and had to have an episiotomy done to facilitate the early birth. The surgeon, Dr. Donlad Long, forgot to check for a rectovaginal fistula (an opening torn in the wall separating the vagina and rectum) when all was said and done. Guess what happened later — Sarah began to pass stool from her vagina. If that’s not traumatizing, we don’t know what is. Needless to say, Dr. Long got served.
