N.C. Supreme Court restores $6 million award against hospital for patient’s death
%20(1).JPG "The N.C. Supreme Court on Friday restored a $6.13 million medical-negligence award against a Charlotte hospital chain in the 2012 death of a patient.")
This story was updated Monday with a statement from the Savino attorneys
The N.C. Supreme Court on Friday restored a $6 million judgment to the family of a Cabarrus County man who died of a heart attack only hours after being released from a Charlotte-area hospital.
According to the court’s opinion, Anthony Savino already was suffering severe chest pain when he was taken by ambulance to what was then known as CMC-Northeast in Concord on the afternoon of April 20, 2012. He was released from the emergency room a few hours after he arrived.
That evening, his body was found by his wife. Savino, 53, had died of a heart attack, according to court documents.
The 2016 lawsuit named the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Hospital Authority along with Carolinas HealthCare System and CMC-Northeast. The latter two are now known as Atrium Health and Atrium Health Cabarrus, respectively.
Lawyers for Savino’s estate argued that vital medical information gathered by an EMT while Savino was being taken by ambulance to the Concord hospital never reached his attending emergency room physician. As a result, the lawsuit claimed, he received incomplete testing that led to his release and kept him from receiving treatment that likely would have headed off his heart attack.
After a 3 1/2-week trial in 2016, a Cabarrus County jury found the hospital and the chain now known as Atrium Health liable on grounds of negligence and negligent performance of administrative duties. It awarded Savino’s estate some $6.13 million in damages.
Along the way, Superior Court Judge Julia Gullett denied motions by defense attorneys to throw out the case on the grounds that the Savino estate had not proven its claims. After the verdict, the judge also refused to overrule the jury’s decision or order a new trial. The defense appealed.
In 2018, a unanimous N.C. Court of Appeals pushed back on procedural grounds. First, it ruled that testimony from the estate’s expert witnesses had not sufficiently supported the jury’s award for “pain and suffering” and ordered a new trial to determine the amount of non-economic damages.
The court also ruled that Gullett had erred by allowing the plaintiffs to include administrative negligence in a medical-negligence case.
This time, both sides appealed, and the case was argued before the state Supreme Court in January. Where the Court of Appeals had zigged, the state’s highest court now zagged.
On Friday, it threw out the lower-court order for a new trial and found that Gullett had not committed a procedural error in allowing both medical negligence and administrative negligence to proceed under one claim.
On the issues of damage, the legal debated veered to the “pain and suffering” Savino went through before his death as to what was experienced by his survivors. The jury’s award included $5.5 million for non-economic damages.
In its opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that the estate’s expert testimony on Savino’s symptoms proved “to a reasonable level of certainty” that Savino had experienced both pain and suffering.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Atrium Health said it disagreed.
While it extended “sympathies and prayers” to Savino’s family, the statement said that pain, particularly associated with heart attacks, “truly varies by person, and in this case it simply isn’t known.”
“The Court of Appeals ruled, and we reaffirmed in our arguments before the state Supreme Court, that there is no evidence and no witness accounts that indicate Mr. Savino was in pain prior to his death,” the hospital statement said.
“We are disappointed in the High Court’s ruling and will need to thoroughly review the opinion and its dissent to better understand the outcome and consider our options.”
Charlotte attorneys Jon Moore and Kent Brown, who represented Savino’s widow and son, took exception with the hospital’s depiction of the case.
“Contrary to the hospital’s assertion, the Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s finding that ample evidence had been presented of Mr. Savino’s pain and suffering,” the lawyers said in a Monday statement.
“This decision — holding the hospital accountable for its actions — will enhance the safety of all hospital patients in North Carolina.”
This story was originally published September 25, 2020 at 6:00 PM.
