RIH loses $2M suit to 1998 heart-surgery patient

PROVIDENCE – A Providence County Superior Court jury ruled that Rhode Island Hospital must pay $2 million plus interest to a Warwick man for brain damage he claims to have suffered as a patient at the hospital after bypass surgery in 1998.
The decision last Friday followed two days of deliberations and a 19-day trial before Associate Justice Netti C. Vogel. Lawyers for the hospital and Dr. William C. Feng, who performed the October 1998 coronary bypass surgery, said they plan to seek a new trial.
Hospital officials “are disappointed in the outcome,” Nancy Cawley, the hospital’s senior media relations officer, told Providence Business News in an e-mail today. “However, as this is an ongoing legal matter we cannot comment further.”
“The facts are what they are,” plaintiff’s attorney Daniel P. McKiernan said in a telephone interview this afternoon with Providence Business News. “We certainly believe the judge handled this matter appropriately and the verdict was based on the facts before the jury.”
At the time of the surgery, Richard T. Barrett, now 59, was a contractor living in East Greenwich. “Mr. Barrett received excellent care at Rhode Island Hospital” during his three-day stay, Cawley said. McKiernan disagreed, saying “there were numerous signs and symptoms of low oxygen that were not recognized until it was a catastrophic event.”
Today, Barrett has “significant neurocognitive deficits,” his lawyer said. “He is able to live on his own,” but his memory is impaired, he tires easily and he has difficulty with many complex tasks.
The jurors “clearly understood that Barrett had been an active member of the community before a certain event,” McKiernan added. His client used to spend “literally thousands of his own hours benefiting the community around him,” as a McAuley House volunteer, a retreat leader, a youth softball coach and a member of various committees, he said. “He is the kind of person who, a healing approach probably would have appealed more to him.”
The hospital and Dr. Feng were represented in the case by David W. Carroll and Dennis E. Carley, of the Providence firm of Roberts, Carroll, Feldstein & Peirce. The firm has no additional comment on the case, Carley told PBN today.
Additional information about the state Superior Courts, including the text of published decisions, is available from the R.I. Administrative Office of State Courts at www.courts.ri.gov.