Senior Trial Partner, Peter T. Crean, assisted by Partner Gregory J. Radomisli and Associate Emma B. Glazer, obtained a defense verdict in Supreme Court, Westchester County before Judge Mary Smith. The case involved a claim of improper prescription of Ativan and Haldol intramuscularly to treat a psychotic patient in a psychiatric ED who refused oral medications. The plaintiff claimed that these medications were contraindicated in light of the decedent’s medical history and pulmonary insufficiency. Almost contemporaneously with receiving the medications, the decedent coded and died. The defense was able to elicit testimony from the medical examiner who performed the autopsy that the relevant medications never made it into the decedent’s bloodstream, and therefore, could not have been the cause of death. It was asserted that the cause of death was excited delirium, sudden death. The jury returned a verdict for the defense based largely on the alternative causation proved by the defense.
