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Winters v. Wright9/11/2003
NATURE OF THE CASE: CIVIL - MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
DISPOSITION: AFFIRMED - 09/11/2003
EN BANC.
. Tammy Winters ("Tammy") and her husband, David Winters ("David"), filed a complaint in Bolivar County Circuit Court against Dr. Bennie B. Wright, Jr. ("Wright") and his employer , Cleveland Clinic, P.A., Bolivar County Hospital ("BCH"), and Cincinnati Sub-Zero Products, Inc. ("Sub-Zero") on December 8, 1995. Tammy's claim arose from an injury to her buttocks and thighs that she claims was caused by a Sub-Zero heating blanket utilized during surgery performed on her by Wright at BCH. Prior to trial, plaintiffs settled their claim against Sub-Zero. Trial with the remaining defendants commenced on January 11, 1999, and ended on January 20, 1999. The jury found in favor of all three remaining defendants, and judgment was entered on February 1, 1999. On February 19, 1999, the trial judge denied the plaintiffs' motion for new trial and judgment notwithstanding the verdict.
FACTS
. Tammy was out with two friends shooting at cans on the bridge over the Quiver River in Sunflower County late on the evening of December 12, 1994. Somehow, while reloading her .380 caliber pistol, Tammy accidentally shot herself in the abdomen. Her friends managed to load her into a vehicle and get her to the North Sunflower County Hospital in Ruleville, Mississippi. The facility was not equipped to treat Tammy, and thus an ambulance took her from there to BCH. Upon arrival at BCH, Tammy was taken to the emergency room. Wright, who was not on duty that night, had been called in by the emergency room physician to care for Tammy. Upon Wright's arrival, Tammy had coded, but had been resuscitated by the emergency room physician. Once she had been resuscitated, Wright ordered the nurses to give her 4,000 cc's of fluid, which is four times the amount normally given to a patient in eight hours. Further, in order to keep Tammy alive, he ordered that she be given uncross-matched blood.
. The bullet had entered her left side beneath her ribs and exited out the lower part of her back causing multiple injuries. Wright then accompanied Tammy to the operating room. Once there, he left to change into scrubs and prep for surgery. While he was out, staff moved Tammy from the gurney to the operating table. Glenda Morton, an operating technician that evening, testified that when Tammy was transferred from the gurney to the table that she noted that her backside was blue. She asked Wright about this, and he informed her that Tammy was bleeding out and the blood was pooling in her back. Under Tammy, on the operating table, was a sterile operating sheet. Under that, was the Blanketrol II blanket manufactured by Sub-Zero. This blanket is attached to a unit which circulates water throughout the blanket. Water is heated or cooled and pumped from the unit to the blanket. The person operating the machine sets the desired temperature of the patient, and the machine pumps the water through the blanket accordingly to regulate the patient's temperature. The unit stands thirty-six inches tall and is seventeen inches wide.
. Christy Tolbert, the circulating nurse on the evening of Tammy's surgery, testified that she turned on the Blanketrol unit that evening and that it was set at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. She also testified that she checked the temperature periodically throughout the surgery and that she never saw it go above the original set point. Upon cross-examination, Tolbert did note that during her deposition she had stated that she did not check the machine every twenty minutes, as suggested by the unit's manual. Once Wright returned to the operating room, Tammy was on the operating
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