Jury Decides Injury Aggravated Cancer, Awards $650,000

An Orange County Superior Court jury awarded $650,000 to an Anaheim Hills woman Tuesday, ruling that injuries she suffered in a 1983 freeway accident aggravated her breast cancer.

“I know of no other case like it,” Orange County Superior Court Judge Jack K. Mandel said after the trial. “You’ve got a jury saying--I think for the first time--that cancer can be enhanced by injury. . . . I think this case just made legal history.”

The verdict came despite testimony by cancer experts that they had no medical evidence linking physical injuries, such as the broken clavicle Pamela J. Rock suffered, to cancer, Mandel said. However, the judge said some of the doctors testified that what they had seen in their practices caused them to believed there can be a link.

Doctors called to testify in the seven-day trial did not dispute the existence of the cancer but disagreed over how extensive it was and whether the trauma to the breast from the accident triggered its spread, Mandel said.

Car Spun, Flipped

Rock, 32, was driving east on the Riverside Freeway in Anaheim with her four children on Feb. 18 when a tractor-trailer bumped the rear of her Volkswagen, which spun and flipped. The children suffered minor injuries while the mother suffered several broken bones, including a crushed clavicle.

Alfred M. Lewis Inc., the Orange County wholesale grocery firm that owned the truck, claimed that Rock’s injuries did not aggravate the cancer that led to Rock’s mastectomy 20 months later. The driver of the truck, Larry Dean Tyson, also was named in the suit.

Dr. Philip J. DiSaia, chairman of UCI Medical Center’s obstetrics and gynecology department with a specialty in oncology, testified that he did not believe Rock’s injuries accelerated any cancer growth, according to Rock’s attorney, Barnard Freedman.

However, Herschel Copeland, an oncologist with a private practice in Orange, testified that 10 to 20% of his patients had a history of severe trauma to their breasts prior to the diagnosis of breast cancer, Freedman said.

‘Very Rare Case’

After the verdict, Freedman said: “It’s very uncommon, it’s a very rare case. We are not saying that any trauma, bump or bruise to the breast may cause cancer. But a blow this severe, given the existing tumor, may have accelerated it.”

The primary issue in the case was whether the “onset” of Rock’s breast cancer could be linked to a broken clavicle, and not Rock’s family history of cancer, Freedman added.

Peter Felchlin of Los Angeles, who represented Lewis Inc. and Tyson, said the company had not decided whether to appeal.

Rock, who was not insured at the time of the accident, said most of the $650,000 will go toward doctor bills.

“We don’t have much choice. It has to,” she said.

She said the grocery company agreed before Tuesday’s decision to pay an undisclosed sum to Rock’s children, ages 4 through 11.

Juror Gilbert Martinez, 40, of Fountain Valley said after the trial: “We all felt that the injury aggravated the tumor.” Martinez, one of 10 men on the 12-member panel, said his fellow jurors were moved by doctors’ testimony that Rock’s life span may be shortened by the disease.