On July 19, 2017, after a two-week jury trial, Lipsitz, Ponterio & Comerford attorney Michael Ponterio obtained a $1.2 million dollar verdict in a medical malpractice lawsuit against doctors from the University of Rochester Medical Center. The plaintiff, a 76-year-old grandmother, went in for a laparoscopic surgical procedure to remove a small fibroid on her cervix.  During surgery, the doctors punctured her bowels in two places and failed to detect the perforations for 31 hours until the patient was in septic shock and near death.

What was supposed to be an overnight hospital stay ended up lasting 84 days, during which time our client underwent nine corrective surgical procedures and two skin grafts.  When she was discharged from the hospital, she still had an open wound in her abdomen.

The jury found the doctors negligent in  failing to timely diagnose the holes in her bowels. “This was a very intelligent jury that followed the evidence and the law in arriving at their verdict in favor of our client,” said attorney Michael Ponterio.

The Honorable Matthew A. Rosenbaum, presided over the trial in Monroe County Supreme Court in Rochester, New York.