Washington Injury Law Blog

A Snohomish County jury awarded, Paramjit Singh, of Mount Vernon, Washington $40.1 million after his heart was so badly damaged by a malfunctioning heart monitor that a heart transplant was required. Mr. Singh must now live the rest of his live on anti-rejection medicine and pray that his body does not one day reject its new heart.

In 2004 Mr. Singh went into Providence Everett Medical Center for heart bypass surgery. During the surgery a heart monitor – built by Edwards Lifesciences Corp. – was used. The heart monitor malfunctioned causing a catheter in Mr. Singh’s heart to overheat and badly burn his heart, such that his heart had to be removed.

According to the hospital – Edwards Lifesciences failed to disclose a problem with the monitor. Edwards attempted to shift blame to the hospital by stating the hospital used a frayed cable. The jury determined Edwards Lifesciences was 99.99% at fault and the hospital 0.01%. As a Washington injury attorney I can tell you that when you have multiple defendants that are potentially at fault, it’s usually a good sign when the defendants are blaming each other and not my injured client. The jury went even further and awarded the hospital $310,000 in damages.

Justice seems to have been done and a defective product has been held accountable for the serious injury it caused. I don’t know the specific details of this case, but Washington juries don’t awarded huge verdicts like this without some really bad conduct by the product maker. If I were a betting man, I’d bet that there was evidence that the product maker knew about the problem with the monitor before hand and failed to warn hospitals that use it. Sounds like a John Grisham story line to me – big bad corporation values profits over peoples lives. 

Source: Seattle PI.