Page 6 - Verdicts and Settlements Hall of Fame: Medical Malpractice

MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
VERDICT & SETTLEMENTS
HALL OF FAME

#1

Case:
Sohl v. Bassett Healthcare Network

Attorney: James D. Linnan and Charlene S. Fallon of

Linnan & Fallon, LLP; Albany, NY, for Debora L. Sohl

Firm: Linnan & Fallon

Date:
10/1/2012

Verdict: $144,690,039

By Phil Albinus

Although he’s been an attorney for decades, James Linnan knows

the value of a good client. And the partner of Linnan & Fallon of
Albany, New York got one in Debora Sohl, a 47-year-old woman who
suffered an overlooked myocardial infarction by the doctors of an

upstate hospital in 2009.

“The client was an absolutely delightful and likable person who

the jury fell in love with,” recalled Linnan. “If you went to central
casting to get the perfect plaintiff for the jury, she would be it.”

She sure sounds like it. Sohl was an ofice manager and book-
keeper for a construction company who trained horses in her spare said Linnan. The only time the plaintiff received a cardiac consult,
time and managed to bring her two daughters up the equestrian according to Linnan, was when her ex-husband consulted his own
ranks of showing horses, all the while as a single mother. But in cardiologist and asked him to stop by the hospital and check on his

early 2009, her picture perfect world fell apart. She arrived at the ex-wife. “He went into the hospital, took the chart away from the
A. O. Fox Memorial Hospital in Oneonta with complaints of chest nurse, picked up the phone and called an ambulance and had her
pains and nausea. According to Linnan, the doctor who irst saw her transferred to another hospital,” he said.

noticed in her chart that she had suffered an anxiety attack a few
years prior and left it at that. She
The 2012 malpractice trial lasted
was prescribed painkillers and eight days with the doctors deny-
“THE CLIENT WAS AN ABSOLUTELY
anti-nausea medication and ing that Sohl looked as if she were
underwent an electrocardiog- suffering a heart attack. The jury
raphy. While in the hospital for DELIGHTFUL AND LIKABLE PERSON WHO deliberated for three hours. And

the next three hours her chest what a verdict: At nearly $145 mil-
pains worsened.
THE JURY FELL IN LOVE WITH,” lion, Linnan said that it is the largest
single plaintiff verdict delivered in
RECALLED LINNAN.
the state of New York ever.
Unfortunately for her, said
Linnan, Sohl was greeted by a
male doctor who did not think
“I can say I didn’t have so much

that a young woman in relatively good health could suffer a heart fun in my life as when I was writing the numbers down as the jury
attack. “So she is one of those anxious women,” Linnan said, describ- was reading them. I was giddy,” he said. “Like Christmas morning.”
ing the doctor’s thinking. Instead, Sohl had all the classic symptoms

of a heart attack. “If you were doing an EMT class, she had every Linnan still keeps in touch with Sohl -- “the joke around here is
symptom to look for. She said that she felt like an elephant was sit- that I’m your lawyer for life” -- whom he said lives alone in a two-
ting on her chest, the pain radiated into her left arm and into her family house and still suffers from her damaged heart. It takes her

left jaw. She had an irregular EKG and so they left her on the loor 20 minutes just to climb the stairs, he said and she may have to be
and left her there for 23 hours while she were having a heart attack.”
placed on a list for a heart transplant in the future.

“Just a great lady,” said Linnan. “I wish all of my clients were as Even if a male doctor had seen in-shape male marathon runner
likable as she is.”
with Sohl’s symptoms, they would have called for a cardiac consult,

4 November 2014