Courtroom Success: Thomas J. Hurney, Jr.

IADC member Thomas J. Hurney, Jr., with Rob Aliff and Jennifer Mankins of Jackson Kelly, Charleston, West Virginia, won a defense jury verdict for a hospital in a medical professional liability case on January 27, 2009, in Charleston, West Virginia.

The plaintiff alleged the defendant physician and hospital staff were negligent in failing to immediately recognize a foreign object as the cause of the patient's sudden respiratory arrest in the coronary care unit of the hospital, and take steps to remove it. Hospital staff witnesses testified that they responded to his respiratory arrest immediately with bag/mask ventilation, then CPR, and timely called and completed a Code. The defense successfully argued, contrary to the plaintiff's experts, that the Heimlich maneuver was not appropriate under the circumstances, nor would it have expelled the foreign object because repeated chest compressions failed to do so. After a ten day trial, the jury found that neither defendant had breached the standard of care.