A Maine surgeon appeared in an Ellsworth courtroom Tuesday to face accusations that, in treating a woman for a hip replacement, he read an X-ray that wasn’t hers, sawed a gap in her femur, and left her with permanent physical impairment and nearly $300,000 in medical bills, according to court documents.
Testimony began Tuesday in a civil trial in which Mary Shea, 71, of Milbridge, is suing orthopedic surgeon Peter Copithorne and Ellsworth’s Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital over a right hip replacement that Copithorne performed on Shea in 2019.
Copithorne performed two surgeries on Shea, who was left with permanent physical impairments because of Copithorne’s “continuing course of negligent treatment,” the lawsuit says.
Shea ended up getting additional surgeries in Portland from a different doctor to repair damage allegedly caused by Copithorne’s treatment, according to court documents.
A physician not involved in Shea’s treatment testified Tuesday morning as an expert witness in the case. Victoria Brander, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, said on the stand that Shea’s recovery was on a “positive trajectory” after the first operation until a second failed surgery several months later that left her with a centimeter long gap in her femur, a bone that’s essential for mobility.
Brander said a previous left hip replacement surgery Shea underwent in 2013 could serve as a model for how she should have recovered from the procedure with Copithorne. Brander calculated that Shea was billed $250,000 more for her total right hip medical treatment than for her successful 2013 surgery, which cost approximately $42,000.
That total figure includes two additional surgeries and years of ongoing pain management and physical therapy.
When the jury was not in the courtroom, Copithorne’s attorney, Douglas Morgan, told the judge that Shea actually paid a total of $27,800 for the treatment of her right hip. That information, however, was not provided to the jury after Elizabeth Kayatta, Shea’s attorney, argued that the estimate was not supported by documents submitted as evidence and should be barred from testimony.
After mistakenly reading another patient’s X-ray, Copithorne didn’t review Shea’s X-rays for more than two months after the first 2019 operation, delaying a crucial discovery that part of the implant was no longer secured to Shea’s femur, the lawsuit alleges. By not reading the X-rays in time, Copithorne missed the window for an “easy revision,” and instead had to perform a second, more invasive surgery to replace the piece, the lawsuit says.
In this second surgery, the lawsuit alleges, Copithorne made another mistake. After using wire to try to close an opening in Shea’s femur, he left a centimeter long gap that was too large to heal postoperatively and required yet another revision surgery — this time by a different doctor.
Shea, who was 64 at the time of the first surgery, was left with significant pain and mobility issues after her treatment with Copithorne, the lawsuit says. She walked with a cane Tuesday in the courtroom.
“The elements of her damage include extraordinary medical expenses, loss of earnings, earning capacity and other economic loss; pain and suffering; loss of enjoyment of life; and permanent impairment and disfigurement,” the complaint alleges.
Copithorne is the second highest-paid physician at Northern Light, the lawsuit says. He earned $712,019 for the fiscal year ending in September 2024, according to ProPublica.
Copithorne specializes in total joint replacements of hips and knees, according to Northern Light’s website. He received his medical degree from the University of Calgary in 2006. His state medical license remains active and is set to expire in January 2028.
The trial started Friday, when the jury was selected and attorneys represented their opening arguments. The trial is expected to last all this week.