Family Wins Suit on Missed Cancer Signals

A jury awarded $205,000 Wednesday to the family of an Orange woman who died after her hip cancer was diagnosed too late, her attorney alleged.

Karen Cunningham went to the Riverside Medical Clinic for five months beginning in May, 1984, for pain in her left hip. Later, doctors at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange diagnosed the cause as cancer, attorney Daniel M. Hodes said.

Cunningham, who received chemotherapy until her death in April, 1986, filed a malpractice lawsuit in July, 1985, in Riverside County Superior Court, seeking unspecified damages, Hodes said.

“To me, the verdict sends a message to prepaid medical care in general,” Hodes said. “We will not tolerate cutting corners in the name of profits.”

Hodes said the Riverside clinic “allowed (Cunningham) to slip through the cracks because they did not have enough physicians to attend to her.”

Hodes said a physician at the Riverside clinic took X-rays showing an abnormality in Cunningham’s hip, but there was no follow-up to better analyze the small growth.

The jury, voting 10 to 2, found that the clinic should have referred Cunningham to another center where her condition may have been diagnosed earlier, Hodes said.

There was a “financial disincentive” to send Cunningham elsewhere, he said, because under her medical coverage the clinic was prepaid for Cunningham’s visits but would have had to pay for medical care provided elsewhere.

The suit named the clinic and three doctors there. Don C. Brown, a Riverside lawyer who represented the defendants, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Cunningham is survived by her husband, Mike, 38, and two daughters, Stephanie, 10, and Heather, 8, Hodes said.