Molly Craig and Jamie Hood Obtained Defense Verdict

IADC members, Molly Craig and Jamie Hood, along with associate, Happel Scurry, obtained a defense verdict on March 21, 2012 in Greenville County, South Carolina before the Honorable Lettita H. Verdin. The Plaintiff filed a medical malpractice action against an electrophysiologist and his practice in connection with the death of a fifty-two year old man following the implantation of an implantable cardioverter defibrillator ("ICD"). The Decedent had a previous history of a myocardial infarction and occluded LAD six years prior to implantation. During a nuclear stress test in 2006, the Decedent experienced ventricular tachycardia and was referred to the electrophysiologist for ICD implantation due to the risk of sudden death from a lethal arrhythmia. Prior to the implantation, the Decedent experienced new onset atrial fibrillation of unknown duration. The Plaintiff alleged the doctor was negligent in failing to treat the atrial fibrillation which caused the heart arrhythmia to continue resulting in twenty shocks from the ICD the day after hospital discharge and ultimately causing the patient's death. To counter the temporal relationship between the implantation and the death, the defense presented expert testimony that the cause of the death was an unpredictable and unpreventable pulmonary embolus related to the Decedent's underlying cardiac problems and not the shocks from the ICD. The case was tried for a week and a half and the jury returned a defense verdict for the electrophysiologist and his practice.