Medical Malpractice - In The News



$2.4 Million Is Awarded For Wife's Brain Damage

By George Flynn

HONOLULU - A federal judge in Honolulu yesterday awarded $2.4 million to a San Diego-area Navy enlisted man who sued for medical malpractice after his wife received severe brain damage while in a Hawaii military hospital in 1978.

"It has been a long four years," Duncan Campbell said. "I still won't believe it until I see the cash in hand."

U.S. District Judge Samuel P. King made the award for Carolyn Louise Campbell, 33, who is now a quadriplegic in a Rancho Bernardo rest home. Lawyer Mark Davis said she has "very limited abilities" with minimal communicative skills.

She was recuperating from surgery at Tripler Army Hospital on Jan. 17, 1978, when she suffered cardiac arrest. Doctors, attempting to restore her breathing with a tube inserted a small flashlight-like device called a laryngoscope in her throat - but the batteries would not power the instrument.

By the time a replacement instrument was located on another floor of the hospital and she was revived, permanent brain damage had occurred.

Davis, who called the award one of the largest ever, said regulations called for properly functioning batteries to be maintained in the device, with a backup set of batteries always on the "crash cart" used by emergency medical teams. The lawyer and Campbell said they did not know whether the federal government will appeal the award, which came after a three-month trial.

"I'm a Navy guy - I've been in 21 years working for Uncle Sam," Campbell said. "I don't harbor any bitterness against anybody, but I don't agree in any way with what happened. A mistake was made, and I took the only recourse available."

He had agreed earlier to a $300,000 settlement with the government, but that was overturned in 1981 by a federal judge. That judge found that Army officials made "grievous and fundamental misrepresentations and concealments regarding the government's liability."

The couple has a son, and had three stepchildren until Mrs. Campbell was disabled.

"I lost the three in the process, when their real father decided to reclaim them," Campbell said. "I could have taken care of them, but he wanted them back and I had no legal grounds to keep them."

He was transferred to San Diego last year and is living in the North County to be near his wife.

"It is still a struggle at times," Campbell said, "but we are trying to take it as it comes. I think it will be all right - and the award should really help."

email Mark Davis