Jury Gives Victim $5.2 Million After Bungled Surgery

Harry Jordan, whose healthy left kidney was removed by surgeons instead of his cancerous right one in 1982, was awarded about $5.2 million in damages for himself and his wife Friday by a Los Angeles Superior Court jury.

After nearly three months of testimony and a week of deliberation, the jurors were unanimous in their verdict in favor of the Jordans and against four of the six doctors the Huntington Beach couple sued.

They were not in total agreement on the sums to be awarded.

And the award itself may stand under a cloud because of a California Supreme Court opinion Thursday that upheld a $250,000 limit on damages for pain and suffering.

The Jordan award breaks down to slightly more than $5.1 million for past and future non-economic damages (pain and suffering) suffered by the couple as a result of the surgical error, with an additional $101,000 earmarked for medical expenses incurred and yet to be incurred.

For loss of income, past and future, the jurors voted zero damages, an announcement most of those in the courtroom appeared to be unprepared for.

“I’m shocked,” David M. Harney, one of Jordan’s lawyers, said outside the courtroom Friday. “The jury apparently wanted to put everything into the pain and suffering department and not in the economic loss department.”

Harney said the award is “terribly low” and added that he believes the Supreme Court opinion influenced the jury.

‘U.S. Supreme Court’

“We are going to go to the U.S. Supreme Court with this,” he said.

In his lawsuit, Jordan, 64, named Long Beach Community Hospital, where the surgery was performed, six doctors and two medical groups as defendants.

The suit contended that a series of blunders--including reading of X-rays backward and failing to obtain the patient’s medical history--led to the surgical error.

In their verdict Friday, jurors did not hold the hospital liable. The decision was rendered against Drs. Barton H. Wachs, Carlton H. Waters, Marshall J. Grobert, William W. Stanton and the Grobert-Sawyer Medical Corp.

Jurors cleared Drs. Robert H. Odell and Rudolph E. Chaney and the Community Radiology Medical Group.

Robert Baker, attorney for Wachs, the surgeon who removed Jordan’s healthy kidney, predicted that the jurors’ award will be reduced by the courts to $353,600 or less as a result of the state Supreme Court opinion affecting malpractice cases. He arrived at that figure by removing all but $250,000 for pain and suffering and adding the sums awarded for medical expenses.

‘Not a Victory’

“It is not a win for anybody,” Baker said. “It is a tragic situation; not a victory for anyone.”

Jordan, seated in a wheelchair outside the courtroom, also disclaimed any feeling of victory Friday.

“I wasn’t looking for vindication,” he said. “I was looking for assistance to pay for the doctors and nurses, whatever would be necessary to carry out the rest of my life.”

Asked what would happen if the award were to be reduced to $350,000, Jordan replied, “I would have to sell my home.”

Jordan said that his medical bills have exceeded $2 million and that he has lost $1.3 million in income.

Jordan’s wife, Miriam, broke into sobs after the verdict was read, a process that took 30 minutes.

“I just hope now we can get back to some normal living and have some peace and quiet,” she said.

She said her only disappointment was in the area of her husband’s loss of earnings and loss of his business. During the trial, Jordan testified that he was forced to sell his 6-year-old Long Beach-based insurance business after the operation.

‘Not a Sham’

His wife said Friday that the defense lawyers “kept saying it was a sham (that the business was sold to their son), and it was not a sham.”

On Nov. 26, 1982, Jordan was rushed to Long Beach Community Hospital, where surgeons removed the good kidney and left one with a baseball-size cancerous tumor intact.

Since that time, Jordan testified during the trial, his life has been an unending regimen of pain, pills, medical visits and further surgeries.

Instead of the active life he had led as a businessman, fisherman and golfer, “I am devastated,” he said on the witness stand.

He testified that he was forced to sell his business and forsake an active round of social and sporting activities that he and his wife Miriam had enjoyed.

In the years since the operation, doctors at UCLA Medical Center have removed more than 80% of his remaining kidney.