A 71-year-old man and his wife were in a car accident in September 2018 when their vehicle was rear-ended. The man was transported to the hospital where he complained of neck, back, and chest pain. The emergency room doctor ordered a CT scan of the man’s neck but the man was unable to lie still for the scan due to his back pain. The emergency room doctor then ordered neck x-rays, which the doctor interpreted as showing no abnormalities (a second reading by a radiologist two days later also resulted in a report of normal findings).
The man returned to his job as a truck driver four days later and subsequently developed severe neurological problems involving his legs, resulting in him collapsing in a parking lot. He was transported to the emergency room where a CT scan showed fractures in his neck and upper back as well as an epidural hematoma compressing his spine. He was transported to a trauma center where he had emergency surgery but suffered paraplegia nonetheless. He remained in a wheelchair for six years, being cared for by his wife, until he died in July 2024, from complications of his paraplegia.
The Georgia medical malpractice lawsuit was filed in 2020 and resulted in a $22 million verdict after an eleven-day trial that ended on June 26. 2026. The verdict included $6 million for the wrongful death, $10 million awarded to the man’s estate, and $6 million for his wife’s loss of consortium claim. There was no settlement offers made by the defendants before trial.
The defense argued at trial through expert testimony that the man’s fractures were not from the car accident and that he developed a spontaneous bleed in his spine unrelated to the trauma, or that the man injured himself when providers were moving him during his medical care following the accident.
The widow’s Georgia medical malpractice lawyer stated after the verdict: “The defense had hired experts just to make up strained stories … but they were paying their experts $20,000 a day, and so what I said to the jury was, ‘Look, if it’s worth $20,000 a day for these doctors to come in and fabricate stories and be a little uncomfortable in cross examination, surely Mr. Tucker’s time was worth $20,000 a day, or half of that, or a third of that … The insurance company … really controls all this. The doctors are pawns in the big litigation machine. … What the public doesn’t know is that insurance is driving all this … and then these insurance companies complain about runaway jury verdicts, when the truth is, if they would just pay the damn claim … this would never happen.” (The plaintiffs attempted to settle the Georgia medical malpractice claims in 2021, by offering to settle for the defendant’s medical malpractice policy limit in the amount of $1 million, which was rejected.)
If you or a loved one suffered harm (or worse) from medical negligence in Georgia or in another U.S. state, you should promptly find a Georgia medical malpractice attorney, or a malpractice attorney in your state, who may investigate your medical malpractice claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a medical malpractice claim, if appropriate.
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