original story by James Diffee of The Albany Herald
ALBANY – A Dougherty County Superior Court jury awarded a $5 million verdict Thursday to a woman who sued an Albany physician for what she claimed was negligence during a 1998 procedure.
Dr. William M. Sewell III performed a tubal ligation on Benita Parker at the time of the procedure on Benita Davis in April of 1998, according to court documents. While performing the procedure, Sewell found and removed cysts from Parker’s ovaries. Parker, then 27, went to the emergency room several days later and was found to have been infected. She was not released from the hospital until June 21, after several surgeries, including one to remove more than three feet of her large intestine.
Parker claims that Sewell botched the operation, failing “to adhere to acceptable standards of care required of careful and prudent medical doctors generally under like circumstances in the same or similar conditions,” according to court docu- ments.
Her attorneys, Carl Reynolds and Kathy McArthur, said Friday that what was supposed to be a “Band-aid surgery” became life-threatening and caused permanent damage to Parker. Other than the loss of part of her bowels, Parker lost her ovaries and her uterus and has osteoporosis, among other problems.
“So a simple tubal ligation turned into a nightmare and a life-changing event,” McArthur said. McArthur said her client’s medical bills totaled about $125,000, with an estimated $40,000 in future medical bills.”
The rest of the verdict would have been for pain and suffering and permanent injury,” McArthur said.
Sewell’s attorney, Dawn Benson, said that what happened to Parker was simply “a complication of surgery.”
“It was a completely unforeseeable, unpredictable complication,” she said.
Benson said that when tumors or cysts are removed, “there are always microscopic bits you can’t get out of a patient.”
“A very few people have some irritation, and fewer fall ill for a short period of time,” Benson said. “This patient just had a really flagrant, aggressive reaction to those little bits of material that caused her to have inflammation.”
Benson said that she and Sewell plan to appeal.
“We think there may have been some confusion or misunderstanding with the jury,” she said. “There’s nothing they heard that should have led to that verdict.”
