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Sheehan obtains Defense Verdict for Surgeon
On November 20, 2018, Timothy J. Sheehan obtained a defense verdict in a case involving a then 42-year old married mother of three young children who was taken to the operating room by her general surgeon for a laparoscopic colectomy to remove the rest of a previously found polyp in her descending colon. Mr. Sheehan’s client, a hepatobiliary surgeon, scrubbed in to assist the general surgeon sometime before the laparoscopic procedure was converted to an open one, because of difficulties encountered in identifying and removing the polyp. Sometime during the surgery, plaintiff claimed that an injury to the small bowel occurred and four days later, the patient was returned to the operating room and a hole in her small bowel was indeed found and repaired. However, the patient continued to deteriorate and died three days later. Plaintiff claimed that Mr. Sheehan’s client improperly used an electrocautery instrument during the first surgery and caused the small bowel injury, should have examined the small bowel before the conclusion of the first surgery, and should have continued to follow the patient in the post-operative period due to the difficulties encountered in the initial surgery. Mr. Sheehan argued that as an assistant surgeon, his client minimally used the electrocautery device nowhere near the area where the small bowel was injured, that he left the procedure before the general surgeon examined the small bowel and that his purely assistive role ended upon his exit from the operating room. Notwithstanding the riveting and tearful testimony of the patient’s surviving husband and her three children, the jury returned a defense verdict for Mr. Sheehan’s client. (New York County Index No.: 805440/13).
