Defense Verdict in New York County
On November 9, 2015, Charles L. Bach, Jr. obtained a unanimous defendant’s verdict in New York County in a medical malpractice case brought against our client, a national leader in neurological surgery.
Plaintiff alleged that our client improperly performed an anterior decompression of plaintiff’s cervical spine by taking off the majority of the C5 vertebra, shaving off too much of the C6 vertebra, and improperly placing a pyramesh cage and an Atlantis plate fusing C4 to C6. Two months after the surgery, a routine spinal x-ray revealed that the screw at C6 backed out and our client recommended that plaintiff return for a revision surgery: another anterior decompression, removal of the first plate, replacement of it with a longer plate fusing to C7, and then flipping the patient onto his stomach to perform a posterior decompression with laminectomies and a fusion from C3 to C7 with Mountaineer Rods.
Plaintiff claimed that he has suffered 9 years of neck pain, has had to take many analgesics including narcotics to deal with the agony of the neck pain, and is a changed man following the second spinal surgery. His “expert” claimed that a simple two level diskectomy would have solved plaintiff’s problem and there should never have been a second surgery.
Mr. Bach proved that our client’s judgment was proper in performing the C5 corpectomy and in the way he fashioned the cage and installed the plate. Plaintiff suffered “screw back out” a known complication about which he was warned before he consented to the operation. Moreover, subsequent radiographic studies have proven that plaintiff’s cervical spine is completely decompressed, fused, and stable thanks to our client. Plaintiff was at risk of paralysis if he didn’t have the first spinal decompression and he is walking, driving, and able to attend to all activities of daily living. Mr. Bach also showed that plaintiff returned to work after the first operation, installing sheet rocking and dry wall at construction sites, then filed for disability within two weeks of the second surgery, and claimed that he had been totally disabled for months before he ever consulted our client.