$5 Million Verdict for Young Woman who Underwent Unnecessary Hysterectomy
Press Release, 09/16/2009A Cook County jury, on Wednesday, September 16, 2009, awarded a 41-year-old Chicago area woman $5 million against a doctor who unnecessarily performed a hysterectomy after her cesarean section to deliver her first child.
Keith A. Hebeisen, partner at Clifford Law Offices, tried the case on behalf of Sharon Virginelli of the northwest suburbs. She underwent a c-section in May, 1999, when she was 31 years old at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Dr. Pamela Lui, her obstetrician, performed the procedure and then determined because of post-operative bleeding that a hysterectomy was necessary. Experts instead testified that her bleeding was, in fact, slowing down and that other less drastic surgical techniques could have been performed that could have avoided the hysterectomy. Virginelli is unable to have any more children.
“This verdict demonstrates that doctors cannot make hasty decisions that are convenient for them,” Hebeisen, partner at Clifford Law Offices, said after the verdict. “These are people’s lives. It is their fragile health of which we are talking about. The jury spoke clearly about how it felt about the wrong that was committed here.” Brian S. Shallcross, associate at Clifford Law Offices, assisted at trial.
The one-week trial was conducted in the Law Division of the Cook County Circuit Court at the Daley Center before Judge Clare E. McWilliams. It took the jury about four hours of deliberation before reaching its verdict today.
