Congratulations to KDC member, Melanie Marr, on her recent defense verdict.  The following is reprinted from the 4/19/17 issue of DRI's The Voice:

Melanie S. Marrs

Fulkerson, Kinkel & Marrs is pleased to announce a recent unanimous Defense Verdict it obtained on behalf of a hospital in Whitley County, Kentucky. Firm partner and DRI member Melanie S. Marrssuccessfully defended the lawsuit that included claims of medical negligence by the hospital’s nursing staff and by the co-defendant doctor.

The lawsuit claimed that the hospital failed to provide appropriate care and treatment of a 22 year-old woman who was admitted with a suspected urinary tract infection, hypokalemia, and symptoms of nausea and vomiting. She remained in the hospital for five days, during which she underwent surgery to treat kidney stones. Following her surgery, the woman’s condition improved sufficiently, including normalization of her potassium levels, such that her treating physician determined she could be discharged. The physician prescribed the woman the antibiotic Levaquin, noted to have a risk of QT wave prolongation in patients with unresolved hypokalemia, to treat her UTI and a case of pneumonia that had developed during her hospital stay. The following day the woman collapsed due to a cardiac event sometime after she took her first dose of Levaquin. Consequently, the woman suffered an anoxic brain injury. The plaintiffs alleged that the hospital nursing staff failed to administer potassium appropriately as required by a standing protocol. With respect to the co-defendant physician, plaintiffs alleged that he improperly discharged her with a prescription of Levaquin. Ms. Marrs defended the nursing staff’s conduct by presenting evidence that the nurses did not administer potassium per a verbal order from the on duty physician to suspend the standing protocol. They also presented evidence that the woman’s cardiac event was the result of stress cardiomyopathy (Takotsubo) rather than due to Levaquin-induced QT wave prolongation. The jury found unanimously for both the hospital and the doctor on standard of care after deliberating for little more than an hour. Plaintiffs had sought $50,000,000.00 as total compensation for the injury.