The Legal Battlefield : Family Seeks Damages After War Hero Died at VA Hospital

Machete battles, machine-gun sniper fire and forays into enemy tunnels beneath the jungle floor. Richard Lee Hadd somehow survived them all during three tours of highly decorated duty with U.S. Army Special Forces in the Vietnam War.

But to the continuing shock of his family, the 45-year-old retired veteran’s final battle came in 1991 at a government-run hospital during what was supposed to be a routine medical test.

The Laguna Beach plumber, suffering from alcohol-related problems, had checked into a Long Beach veterans hospital and agreed to let doctors take a microscopic sample from his liver. Instead, doctors cut an artery in his pancreas, and he bled to death less than a day later, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by his mother against the U.S. government.

“He died at the hands of the people he was supposedly fighting for,” said Hadd’s mother, Audrey, a 68-year-old widow who lives in Arkansas.

The case is set for a non-jury trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, and comes in the midst of the national debate over medical malpractice lawsuits and talk of new laws to curb liability claims.

The Hadd case, though, comes with few twists: Government attorneys have filed legal papers stating they will not contest liability for his death.

The sole issue: How much damages his mother should receive, primarily for pain and suffering. And that amount will be no more than $250,000 because of a state law limiting such damages in medical malpractice cases.

Lawyers with the U.S. attorney’s office, which is representing the government, have declined to discuss the case.

In a pretrial memorandum, however, the government’s lawyers dispute the family’s damage claim, contending that Hadd suffered from severe liver disease and probably had no more than five years to live.

Officials with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Long Beach also declined requests for comment.

Regardless of what a judge ultimately awards, Hadd’s family says no amount could ever make up for their loss.

“After all he did for his country--to come to a government-run hospital and have this happen,” said Hadd’s twin brother, Robert, who shared a home and a plumbing business with him. “I just don’t want him remembered as some guy who had a drinking problem. I want him remembered as a hero.”

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Richard Lee Hadd--nicknamed “Dicky” by his family--joined the Army in 1963 as soon as he graduated from high school in the small town of Chester, N.H.

Military service ran in the family. His older brother Dennis joined the Army, and Robert became a Marine. His father had spent seven years in the Coast Guard, and a grandfather had been a chief engineer with the Navy.

Soon after enlisting, Hadd landed in Vietnam.

With his wiry build, Hadd became what was known as a “tunnel rat.” His first assignments took him deep below the jungle floor to scour tunnels built by the Viet Cong to hide weapons and soldiers.

In one trip underground, Hadd nearly died in an explosion, family members said. His commanders were preparing to award him the Silver Star posthumously--one of the highest awards for gallantry in action--when he surprised everyone by turning up alive, the only one to have survived the blast.

Two years later in 1966, his actions earned him a Silver Star after his company came under heavy fire on a search-and-destroy mission in the dense jungles of Dau Tieng.

Hadd, seeing members of his platoon dying around him, charged a bunker but was driven back by “devastating fire of the enemy,” as described in a 1967 award commendation. That didn’t stop him. Hadd gathered more ammunition and charged the bunker again, this time killing a sniper inside. He continued to draw fire on other flanks to give medics time to evacuate the wounded.

One of the few mementos Hadd saved from his war days is a framed black-and-white photo of Gen. William Westmoreland pinning the Silver Star to his uniform. During Hadd’s 22-year career in the Army, which in later years took him to Europe, he received more than a dozen commendations, including the Bronze Star, according to his discharge papers.

Hadd retired from the Army in 1985 out of Ft. Ord at the rank of sergeant first class. He settled with his twin brother in Rowland Heights, and later Laguna Beach. He never married.

Family members say said he rarely detailed his combat experience, which included a machete battle that left hundreds around him dead. During another battle, Hadd was injured by grenade shrapnel that hit his arm, but he would always tell his family: “It was nothing.”

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“Anything funny or anything amusing he would tell,” his mother said. “But he wouldn’t tell the bad part of it. He was in a lot of that. . . . It gives me chills just thinking about it.”

After the military, Hadd and his twin brother--younger by 15 minutes--bought a trailer in Laguna Beach’s scenic Treasure Island and ran a plumbing business together. Hadd loved to fish and was constantly swapping recipes with his mom over the phone. Robert Hadd said his brother made the best potato salad, something everyone looked forward to at barbecues.

But the veteran had darker moments.

“He had a drinking problem,” Robert Hadd said. “All those years in Vietnam would drive anyone to drink a little bit.”

Family members say Hadd never let his drinking get in the way of his responsibilities. And they contend his medical problems were not life-threatening.

“He always kept (his drinking) under control,” his mother said. “He was not belligerent or hateful. He was always a wonderful kid. He would always take care of everything. He was always the sergeant.”

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Hadd suffered from cirrhosis of the liver and sought treatment at the veterans hospital several times. In June, 1991, he had given up drinking “cold turkey” and suffered a seizure, his brother said. Hadd was admitted to the VA on June 20.

Fearing Hadd might have cancer, doctors ordered a liver biopsy, a procedure that involves removing a small amount of tissue to be tested under a microscope for presence of a disease, his family said. Hadd described the procedure in his own words on the consent form as: “Stick a needle in my body to take out a small piece of my liver, using an X-ray for guidance.”

“It was no big thing,” Robert Hadd said. “We didn’t even bother going down to the hospital. He didn’t think it was a big thing.”

But during the procedure on July 15, 1991, doctors inserted a biopsy needle into his pancreas, cutting an artery, according to the family’s lawsuit. Hadd died of internal bleeding less than 24 hours later, on the morning of July 16.

The deputy coroner who filled out his death certificate lists the cause of death as an accident from “laceration of artery during biopsy of pancreatic mass.”

The family’s lawsuit contends that Hadd was in no condition to undergo any type of biopsy, and doctors failed to wait for test results that would have “shown them that conducting the biopsy was ill-advised.”

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Questions about who was to blame and what occurred in the operating room during the biopsy procedure will not be explored during the trial because the case is limited to damages, said attorney Peter A. Seidenberg, who is representing Hadd’s mother.

The doctors who handled Hadd’s care are not expected to testify, and are not named in the lawsuit because as government employees, they are immune from liability, Seidenberg said.

Robert Hadd said he filed a complaint in December with the California Medical Board against four doctors involved in his brother’s care at the hospital. Board records show no past or current disciplinary action pending against them.

Seidenberg said the case will boil down to how much money Audrey Hadd should receive for the loss of her son’s “care, comfort and society.” The case will be heard by U.S. District Judge John G. Davies. Federal laws do not allow jury trials in lawsuits such as this against the government.

“We’re arguing over the loss of a mother’s son, whom she probably laid awake most of the time he was in Vietnam wondering where he was,” Seidenberg said. “To lose him in this way, that’s the real tragedy.”

Family members say they still have a hard time believing Hadd is gone.

After his hospital stay, Hadd had planned to temporarily move in with his parents in Arkansas and take care of his ailing father, who died of a heart attack this past summer.

“We thought he was coming home,” Robert Hadd said.

The twin said his plumbing business has fallen on hard times since the death of his brother, who never minded crawling under houses to check leaky pipes.

“It’s been very rough,” he said. “The love. I just can’t describe it. We were very close.”