September 5, 2018 – Congratulations to William Leedom and David Norman, and the rest of the BB&L team, for their defense verdict in favor of their client, a defendant medical center. The case centered around a claim of medical negligence against a board certified cardiac surgeon for temporarily losing a small surgical needle in the patient during a successful and complex multi-hour heart operation in December 2014. The needle was discovered to be in the patient during the operation, but it could not be retrieved by the surgeons. The medical consensus from the patient’s providers, including specialists providing second opinions, was that the risks of surgical intervention to remove the needle far outweighed any potential benefit of removing the needle, and that the needle was not going to change position or cause any physical harm to the patient.
Trial began August 27, 2018 before the Honorable Mary Roberts in King County Superior Court. The jury returned a verdict for the defendant medical center on September 5, 2018, concluding that the defendant met the standard of care. (King County Sup. Ct. No. 27-2-08438-7 SEA)