Florida juries in the last month have returned two hefty verdicts in favor of plaintiffs, one for a slip and fall at a Walmart and one for the death of a stroke patient at a hospital.
In Apopka, near Orlando, a jury awarded $948,000 to a woman who fell after slipping on a wet bathroom floor at the Walmart in 2016. Jessica Amador was shopping with her mother and helped her mother into the restroom, which had just been mopped, the complaint said.
Amador slipped and struck the back of her head on a bathroom stall, causing serious injury and mental anguish, her lawyers said. The store should have followed its own procedures and kept the bathroom closed until the mopped floor was dry, and should have warned patrons of the danger, the complaint argued. The jury awarded $198,000 for medical expenses and another $750,000 for pain, suffering, disability, anguish and inconvenience.
In Port Charlotte, south of Tampa, a jury granted $2.6 million to the widow of a man who suffered a stroke in 2016 after he allegedly was not hospitalized soon enough, according to court records.
Michael Hodge, a 62-year-old fabrication worker, visited a vascular surgeon in June 2016. The physician found severe atherosclerosis in Hodge’s arteries and scheduled a plaque-removal surgery for three weeks later.
A week before the scheduled surgery, Hodge felt ill and was taken to Bayfront Health Port Charlotte, operated by Port Charlotte HMA. He suffered a stroke and died the next day, the complaint reads.
Hodge’s estate argued that the man should have been admitted to the hospital in early June, immediately after he was evaluated by the vascular surgeon. An expert witness for the plaintiff said hospital personnel also failed to follow the hospital’s stroke procedures.
The jury found that one doctor was not liable but that the hospital and two other doctors were. The jury said that damages for Hodge’s family totaled as much as $7.5 million, but assigned 65% to unnamed defendants under Florida’s Fabre defendant doctrine. The practice, arising from a 1993 court decision, allows juries to apportion some liability to a Fabre defendant to avoid unfairly blaming a named defendant.
The hospital’s and the doctors’ insurance companies were not named in the litigation.
Topics Florida
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