MWU Chicago Osteopathic Med $9.858M Verdict

A Chicago jury returned a $9.858 million verdict against the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine and the doctor running the Fellows Clinic of the college in Downers Grove, Illinois, on behalf of a Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C. client who was formerly a medical student at that school.

Now 31 years old, our client was injured on December 8, 2003, at the Fellows Clinic. That day, she presented to the clinic with complaints of mild shoulder and neck pain from studying. An unsupervised medical student manipulated her neck, injuring her long thoracic nerve. As a result of her injury she had two shoulder surgeries, developed a chronic pain syndrome and had to withdraw from medical school.

In the medical malpractice lawsuit, the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine and the doctor, who ran the Fellows Clinic, denied doing anything wrong, arguing that our client suffers instead from a rare disease. The Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C. trial team believed this defense had no merit and the jury agreed. The trial team brought out that a defense witness filed a false affidavit in the case, and an important log record had been altered by someone at the college.

The defense attorney argued our client’s credibility was suspect, but our firm effectively turned that around on the defense during the final rebuttal argument. In the Fellows Clinic on the day our client was hurt, the university failed to have procedures and protocols requiring direct on-premises supervision of medical students by a licensed doctor as required by Illinois law. Instead, the medical student was allowed to form his own diagnosis and treatment plan, and then he proceeded to execute it badly, all without supervision.

At 31, our client has accomplished much in her life. She was graduated from Rush University College of Nursing cum laude in 1998 and was inducted into the national nurses’ honor society, Sigma Theta Tau. She worked as a registered nurse while completing her prerequisites for medical school and was accepted to the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine where she began medical school in August of 2003. Before she was injured, our client was also a marathon runner, completing four marathons including her favorite, LaSalle Bank’s Chicago Marathon, on two occasions.

Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C. is a personal injury law firm based in Chicago, Illinois. The personal injury attorneys at Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C. have achieved multimillion-dollar verdicts and settlements for individuals with lawsuits arising from medical malpractice, product liability, semitruck and motor vehicle accidents, workplace injuries and construction accidents in Illinois and Wisconsin. Rapoport Weisberg & Sims P.C.’s premier aviation negligence lawyers represent victims of commercial and general aviation disasters nationwide.