Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 16, 1994 TAG: 9409160067
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER NOTE: below
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The hospital agreed to pay an undisclosed amount to settle the $1 million medical malpractice lawsuit shortly before it was scheduled to go to trial this week in Roanoke Circuit Court, lawyers said.
The lawsuit stemmed from a July 8, 1991, accident that happened just 24 hours after the birth of Mary Katherine Yengst.
A nurse working in the intensive care nursery about 4 a.m. had just taken the infant from her crib and placed her on a scale on a nearby table, according to Daniel Frith, a Roanoke attorney who represented Mary Lynn Yengst, a Roanoke-area resident and the child's mother.
The nurse then turned her back to change the linens in the crib, at which point the infant fell about three feet from the scale to a tile floor, Frith said.
The child suffered what the lawsuit described as "serious and permanent" head injuries.
Had the case gone to trial, court records indicate the hospital would have admitted some negligence, while denying that the infant's death was caused by the fall.
The hospital stated in court papers that a nurse "permitted Mary Katherine Yengst to fall from a weighing scale or table to the floor, which constitutes a deviation from the standard of nursing care."
However, the hospital was prepared to call an expert witness to testify that the child died from an unknown disease.
Frith said his own medical experts would say the fall damaged the child's pituitary gland and caused her health to degenerate steadily until she died Feb. 20, 1992.
"It was our position all along that she died as a result of the fall," he said.
The child was born slightly prematurely, but was otherwise a "healthy, viable infant at the time of her birth," the lawsuit stated.
Under terms of the settlement, the amount of damages is being kept a secret. Frith would say only that the Yengst family was "very happy and satisfied with the resolution of this case."
George Wooten, a Roanoke lawyer who represented the hospital, said "we just took the position that we're sorry it ever happened."
The nurse involved in the accident was not identified in the lawsuit. It was not known Thursday if he or she is still employed at the hospital. Vance Whitfield, a spokesman for Roanoke Memorial, declined to comment on the case, saying that a confidentiality agreement was part of the settlement.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB