Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
The following blog entry is written from a defendant’s position as trial approaches. Reviewing this kind of briefing should help potential plaintiffs and clients better understand how parties in personal injury cases present such issues to the court.
It is worth noting that situations similar to those described in this medical malpractice case could just as easily occur at any of the healthcare facilities in the area, such as Kaiser Permanente, UC Davis Medical Center, Mercy, or Sutter.
(Please also note: the names and locations of all parties have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the participants in this wrongful death case and its proceedings.)
Although, out of context, the terms full-body physical therapy and the absence of special precautions do exist in the cited passage, it is clear from the outset that Dr. Lee did not want any therapy done on the neck. As he said, above Very important now. I say again, therapy is not for neck. The contrary claim by Plaintiffs is simply an attempt to falsely re-characterize very clear testimony. For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.
It should also be noted that Plaintiffs’ only standard of care expert, Dr. Goldstein, testified specifically as to the nature of physical therapy that he would criticize at one point in his trial testimony, and that was as follows (Reporter’s transcript, page 160, line 28 to page 161, line 5):
Q. [by Mr. Howard] All right. And did you find that Dr. Lee had done any of these things?
A. No. And actually ordering physical therapy probably wasn’t a good idea. Generally speaking, if someone has a possibility of a broken neck, I would not order physical therapy of the neck.
Here, Dr. Goldstein did not even express the opinion that ordering physical therapy of the neck was below the standard of care, as opposed to something HE would not order. His strongest statement here was that physical therapy of the neck probably wasn’t a good idea. And, of course, as is clear from the above-cited testimony of Dr. Lee, he never ordered, nor did he intend to order, physical therapy of the neck. (See Part 5 of 8.)
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.