A large malpractice award against Northern Light Health this week is the latest in a string of jury rulings against the northern and eastern Maine healthcare giant this year, totaling more than $47 million.
In this week’s case, a couple was awarded $17 million after a Northern Light Health surgeon removed the woman’s bladder instead of an ovarian cyst.
Northern Light Health was found by juries to be at fault three other times this year in negligence lawsuits against the Brewer-based health system.
Jury trials for such cases are rare, and this recent run has resulted in large sums awarded to the plaintiffs, ranging from three-quarters of a million dollars to $23.1 million.
The smallest of the four awards came in February when a jury awarded $750,000 to a 71-year-old woman who suffered permanent harm after the surgeon performing her hip-replacement surgery at an Ellsworth hospital failed to read an X-ray, missing a routine complication, and later sawed a centimeter-long gap in her femur.
In April, a jury awarded a 41-year-old man $6.5 million after Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center failed to operate on an emergency spinal injury for nearly 24 hours in August 2021. The delay left the man partially paralyzed, able to walk only short distances with the help of braces on both legs, and no longer able to control his bladder and bowels.
In June, an Aroostook County jury awarded $23.1 million to a Madawaska man who was left paralyzed from the chest down after doctors at A.R. Gould Hospital, Northern Light’s facility in Presque Isle, failed to identify bone calcification in his spinal canal and follow the necessary emergency protocols to avoid paralysis.
The award was the second-largest medical malpractice verdict in Maine’s history, and largest north of Portland, according to the man’s attorneys.
