Delay in Diagnosing Meningitis Claimed : Parents Sue Hospital for $20 Million

A 36-hour delay in diagnosing meningitis in an infant girl caused her to be permanently impaired, an attorney for the girl’s family alleged Thursday in Burbank Superior Court during opening arguments in a malpractice trial.

The parents, Leticia Morales and Kevin McAliley of Sepulveda, are suing Serra Memorial Health Center in Sun Valley, three physicians and one nurse over the care their child, Tiffany McAliley, received in 1981. The girl, now 5 years old, suffers from deafness, recurring seizures and is “severely retarded for life,” the parents’ lawyer said.

Attorneys for the defendants disputed the charges of the parents’ attorney, Bruce G. Fagel, with the lawyer for one pediatrician calling the treatment “well within standard practices.”

The parents are asking for damages of $20 million to cover Tiffany’s care for the rest of her life, plus unspecified punitive damages.

Claims in Suit

Their suit accuses the defendants of misdiagnosing Tiffany’s illness, ignoring obvious signs of meningitis, failing to perform a spinal tap in a timely manner and allowing the child’s condition to deteriorate without proper treatment.

Fagel said Tiffany contracted meningitis soon after she was admitted to the emergency room of the hospital on Dec. 14, 1981, when she was 10 months old. Fagel said the child had a bacterial infection in her bloodstream that was unnoticed by doctors and spread to her brain during her hospitalization.

He said a pediatrician at the hospital failed to “respond to an obvious pediatric emergency” when he spoke to the hospital by phone from his home to authorize the admission. The next morning, the pediatrician examined the girl but only for 15 minutes, he said.

By the morning of Dec. 16, the child was comatose, and her illness had “advanced to a point of irreversible complications,” Fagel said.

The case is expected to last four weeks.