Settlement more than $5.5 million

BY FRANK GREEN
Media General News Service
Published: November 12, 2008

A drug manufacturer has settled claims in four Fredericksburg wrongful-death cases for a total of more than $5.5 million.

Last year, a judge in Spotsylvania County Circuit Court approved the settlements stemming from surgeries performed at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg — but the terms were not disclosed.
A Fredericksburg-area newspaper and the Richmond Times-Dispatch filed suit requesting that the terms be made public. Judge Anne Hunter Simpson agreed but allowed the details to remain private pending appeals to the Virginia Supreme Court.

In September, the justices upheld the judge’s decision to make the financial terms of settlements public.

Monday, the documents showed that the settlements ranged from $1.15 million to $1.9 million. One involved a $600,000 payment and then a series of payments over the next 12 to 20 years to three survivors totaling an additional $652,000.

Mary Washington Hospital, which also had been sued, was dismissed as a defendant in most of the lawsuits. It closed its cardiac unit for two weeks in 2005 after one patient died and two became ill after operations involving the use of Central Admixture’s drug, cardioplegia.

Cardioplegia is a drug solution that paralyzes the heart during cardiac surgery. The hospital admitted no liability and did not pay anything beyond its share of the formal mediation process and the hospital’s attorneys’ fees.

The drug manufacturer also settled but said it wanted to keep the dollar amounts private because, among other things, revealing payments could lead the public to misinterpret payment as an admission of liability and encourage more suits.

Surviving family members gave affidavits stating that public disclosure of the financial terms would reopen emotional wounds and could make them the targets of criminals.

But in September, the justices cited an earlier ruling in which it held: “The people have a vital interest, one of personal and familial as well as community concern, in cases involving claims of medical malpractice.“

Frank Green is a staff writer at Media General’s Richmond Times-Dispatch.