Michael Sullivan and Adam Kaufman Receive A Defense Verdict in Queens County

HPM&B partners Michael Sullivan and Adam Kaufman obtained a unanimous defense verdict in a Supreme Court, Queens County medical malpractice case on November 1, 2019 after a two week trial. 

Plaintiff’s decedent was 50 years old when he presented to the defendant hospital on October 10, 2014 with complaints of vertigo and generalized weakness.  He had a history of hypertension, diabetes and coronary artery disease for which he had stents placed two months earlier.  The patient was evaluated with a CT scan, MRI/MRA scans and a CT angiogram, and he was diagnosed with areas of infarction in the left cerebellum and an occlusion of the left vertebral artery which was consistent with a thrombus and/or dissection.  The patient was continued on Plavix, started on aspirin and heparin, and admitted to the MICU for close monitoring.  Despite treatment, the decedent’s stroke progressed on the morning after admission and ultimately resulted in his death two days later.  Plaintiff claimed that an interventional neuroradiologist should have been consulted and a thrombectomy should have been performed to remove a clot in the patient’s basilar artery which allegedly caused his sudden deterioration on October 11, 2014.  Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Kaufman established through the testimony of a vascular neurology expert and an interventional neuroradiology expert that there was no indication for an interventional neuroradiology consultation in this case, and the jury unanimously agreed after six days of testimony before the Honorable Cheree A. Buggs.