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Failure to Treat Electrolyte Imbalance Drives Death of 42 Year Old
$1,875,000 Settlement
This past September during jury selection in Westchester County Thomas M. Oliva settled a case involving the death of a 42-year-old Vice President for Blue Cross / Blue Shield. Two general practitioners failed to investigate the underlying cause of diarrhea which went on for three weeks leading to fluid loss and a resulting electrolyte imbalance. This father of two suffered a heart arrhythmia and was found dead on his living room couch. The fact that the doctors never took blood work to monitor the decedent's fluid loss drove Tom to piece together what actually killed his client from very few medical records. Using his knowledge from sixteen years of medical malpractice litigation Mr. Oliva put together a case against the defendant. Certain findings on the autopsy report, notations regarding blood pressure and weight loss, showed that Tom's client lost a significant amount of fluid from the untreated diarrhea. This led to a loss of sodium that affected the electrical conductivity in his client's heart taking his life prematurely.
During jury selection the insurers for the doctors offered to settle and the wife of the decedent decided not to place herself and her children through the trauma of reliving the events at a trial so a settlement was reached.