On Tuesday of last week, a Broward County jury awarded a verdict of $1.5 million dollars against Dr. Kingsley Chin, a Harvard trained orthopedic spinal surgeon. In April of 2017, Mark Woodard, a 50-year-old gentleman, was rear-ended in a car accident. After 10 days, he went to see orthopedic spinal surgeon, Dr. Kingsley Chin, then practicing in Hollywood, Florida.
Dr. Chin put Mr. Woodard through the regimen of medication, physical therapy, and initial injections on the first visit, and talked about doing different kinds of injections after that, including epidural steroid injections and other injections, but never did them. It was a rush to surgery, and a little more than 6 months after the accident, Dr. Chin finally convinced Mr. Woodard to have surgery. However, it was not only one surgery, but spinal fusion surgery on his neck and his lower back, on the same day, in an out-patient medical practice.
It was our contention that neither procedure was necessary. Dr. Chin’s surgery substantially worsened Mr. Woodard’s condition, including but not limited to cutting through a congenital conjoined nerve root at the level of L5-S1, and then doing two subsequent exploratory surgeries, unable to find the cause of Mr. Woodard’s substantially increased pain, blaming it on “scar tissue”.
Finally, Mr. Woodard went to see another orthopedic spinal surgeon, who went in there, did an exploratory surgery, and found the conjoined nerve, which Dr. Chin had cut through, and also found a bone graft that was supposed to hold a disc spacer in place sitting on the S1 spinal nerve.
The defense presented testimony from a Stanford University educated orthopedic spinal surgeon that there was no departure from the standard of care by Dr. Chin. We hired an orthopedic surgeon who went to medical school in Syria and had a successful practice in Orlando for 40 years. He testified to the standard of care violations by Dr. Chin.
In the closing argument, the defense lawyer for Dr. Chin blamed the later treating physician who did the last surgery for having caused the injury.
Thankfully, and also because there was no evidence against the second surgeon, the jury returned a verdict of medical malpractice against Dr. Chin, making him liable for the injuries caused by the first surgery.
If you, a friend, loved one, or anyone in your life has been injured in any kind of accident, please have them call our law firm at (954) 833-1440 to see if we can assist.