Texas Family Sues Medical Center Arlington Over Young Mother's Brain Damage
Woman deprived of oxygen for more than 30 minutes at hospital where she worked
DALLAS, Dec. 18, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The family of a 29-year-old mother of two from Burleson, Texas, has filed a medical negligence lawsuit against Medical Center Arlington, the same hospital where the woman had worked as a surgical technician for eight years. The lawsuit says the victim was deprived of oxygen for more than a half-hour and suffered permanent brain damage when her breathing tube was dislodged.
The lawsuit filed by Caden Clark on behalf of his wife, Katina, and their two young children includes claims against Medical Center Arlington and staff members who were responsible for Ms. Clark's care. Currently, Ms. Clark is in a permanent, near-comatose state, requiring constant medical assistance and monitoring. The Clark family is represented by noted trial attorney Chris Hamilton of Dallas' Standly Hamilton, LLP.
"This is one of the worst cases of medical malpractice you'll ever see in a Texas hospital," says Mr. Hamilton. "Ms. Clark was a happy mother with her whole life ahead of her, but all that vanished in an instant because Medical Center Arlington and its employees stood by while she was suffocating before their very eyes. It is simply unbelievable that she was a trusted employee of the same hospital where this happened."
Ms. Clark was admitted last summer after experiencing numbness in her legs. She was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), a rare condition affecting the nervous system that causes muscle weakness and sometimes requires temporary mechanical assistance with breathing. Most GBS patients recover completely once their symptoms have passed.
Hospital staff fitted Ms. Clark with a breathing tube through her mouth before changing it to a tracheostomy tube through a neck incision. Although the procedure prevented Ms. Clark from speaking, she was awake and mentally alert.
According to the lawsuit, there were problems from the start when the trachea tube was improperly inserted. Medical records show Ms. Clark received much less air than she needed, and the leak continued unattended even though doctors and hospital staff should have known that she was receiving only approximately half the oxygen required. The next morning, a nurse improperly turned Ms. Clark, and her breathing tube became dislodged, the lawsuit says. After 35 minutes, hospital staff finally re-established ventilation, leaving her with severe brain damage.
The case filed in Judge Sally Montgomery's Dallas County Court-at-Law No. 3 is Caden Clark, et al. v. Columbia Medical Center of Arlington Subsidiary, et al., No. CC-14-06294-C.
Standly Hamilton, LLP, is home to trial lawyers who handle high-stakes contingency fee litigation for both plaintiffs and defendants, and transactional attorneys who represent real estate and corporate clients in a wide spectrum of business transactions. For more information, visit http://www.standlyhamilton.com.
For more information on the lawsuit, please contact Bruce Vincent at 800-559-4534 or [email protected].
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SOURCE Standly Hamilton, LLP
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