Trial to begin in wrongful death claim
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A family photo of Samuel Sweet fishing a few years ago on the Allegheny River.
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As far as Samuel Sweet was concerned, he only had a headache. It was a bad one, but nothing more, maybe something his chiropractor could fix with a little adjustment.
But three days after being admitted to UPMC Presbyterian for what his family was told was a treatable amount of bleeding on the brain, and six hours after his family saw him laughing and chatting about the Penguins' playoff chances, early in the morning of May 16, 2009, Mr. Sweet died unexpectedly.
Why he died is the subject of a civil case his family filed a few months later that is set to be heard by a jury as early as today in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court.
In the lawsuit, they allege a series of mistakes were made by his doctors and nurses. In particular, they claim that a doctor who knew Mr. Sweet was difficult to intubate -- that is, placing a tube into his lungs to help him breathe -- did not tell succeeding doctors. In addition, the lawsuit alleges while Mr. Sweet was in respiratory distress, a nurse improperly gave him a tranquilizer to calm him down, but it also stopped his breathing.
But in addition to the medical errors, through their attorney, Deborah Maliver, they also allege that after he died, hospital staff tried to cover up what happened by altering his electronic medical record. That's a serious claim that, if proven, could result in state sanctions against the staff members beyond any award in the civil case.
"Not only did the doctors fail at every step, but you dig deeper and there's more still," Mr. Sweet's son, Bill, 34, who is an operating room coordinator at UPMC Shadyside, said recently in an interview.
Instead of acknowledging their own mistakes in the case about Mr. Sweet's intubation problems and improperly giving him a tranquilizer, the lawsuit alleges the doctors and nurses later wrote notes that say Mr. Sweet refused intubation until it was too late, at one point slapping away a nurse's efforts.
"They're trying to blame this man; that he died because he refused intubation," Ms. Maliver said.
UPMC's lead attorney in the case, John Conti, said the claims of altering records are "repugnant" and untrue.
"The facts don't fit with the conspiracy theories as their lawyer puts forward," Mr. Conti said. "These doctors and nurses are people who tried to do their very best at the hospital."
First Published September 19, 2011 12:00 am
