More juror affidavits filed in large malpractice case
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
ABOUT THE CASE
Kristen Freeman was a 31-year-old woman living in Chattanooga in 2006 when she saw Dr. Michael Goodman to diagnose bowel problems. After a routine colonoscopy and endoscopy, Ms. Freeman started experiencing pain and nausea. By the next day, when she arrived at Erlanger hospital, she was "so weak," documents indicate, that she couldn't walk. After suffering cardiac arrest and permanent brain damage from complications of the procedures, Ms. Freeman sued Dr. Goodman. In court papers, her attorneys claimed he should have told her to go to the emergency room immediately instead of waiting until the next day. A Hamilton County jury in April found Dr. Goodman 51 percent at fault, allowing Ms. Freeman to collect $6.1 million in damages. Dr. Goodman is appealing.
Weeks after a Hamilton County jury made one of the largest awards ever in a medical malpractice lawsuit here, more juror affidavits are emerging in the ongoing debate as to what really happened in the jury deliberation room.
Attorneys for Kristen Freeman, who was awarded $6.12 million in April, late last week filed an affidavit by a juror who claims no one on the panel was "coerced" to find Dr. Michael Goodman, a local gastroenterologist, at fault for the sake of saving the time and expense of a retrial.
"We anticipate that we will file at least one additional affidavit in support of the verdict (next week)," Ms. Freeman's attorney, James Neal, said Tuesday.
He declined to comment further on the case.
Last week's affidavit directly contradicts four separate affidavits filed by jurors in mid-June as a part of Dr. Goodman's appeal. Those jurors indicated that they felt pressured by the court to abandon their "honest convictions" and reach a unanimous verdict, despite their belief that Dr. Goodman was not solely responsible for Ms. Freeman's condition.
During the Circuit Court civil trial, attorneys for Ms. Freeman claimed that the care she received from Dr. Goodman in the aftermath of complications from a routine colonoscopy and endoscopy in 2006 led to her brain damage.
"We have always said that there was no breach in the standard of care," attorney David Harrison said shortly after he filed Dr. Goodman's appeal, making the rare decision to bring closed-door juror deliberations into the open and blame court instructions for the decision they reached.
In their response to Dr. Goodman's appeal for a new trial, Ms. Freeman's attorneys are calling the move a "desperate -- and familiar -- attempt to avoid liability."
Her attorneys are particularly dismissive of allegations that the court somehow acted improperly in its instructions to jurors to consider the time and expense involved when it appeared they might not reach a verdict.
Those instructions, known in legal circles as the "Allen charge" and largely discredited by Tennessee courts, were condoned by the defense, Ms. Freeman's attorneys argue, when it appeared that they thought they would win.
"Goodman was obviously thinking the Allen charge, if effective, would result in a defense verdict," Ms. Freeman's attorneys state in court documents. "He gambled, and lost. Tennessee law does not allow a self-created second bite at the apple."
