Appeals court revives medical malpractice lawsuit against radiologist, claiming judge gave jury improper instructions
An appeals court has revived a malpractice lawsuit against a radiology group that appeared to be over, claiming the judge gave the jury improper instructions.
Eric C. Burns previously sued radiologist Voytek W. Sobieraj, MD, and Associated Radiologists of the Finger Lakes after sustaining injuries resulting from the alleged misread. A jury sided with the doctor and the Elmira Heights, New York, imaging group in October 2024, dismissing the complaint.
Burns later appealed and, last month, the Appellate Division of the state Supreme Court unanimously reversed the verdict, reinstated the complaint and granted a new trial, the Daily Record reports.
“We agree with plaintiffs that reversal is required because Supreme Court improperly gave an error in judgment charge,” the court wrote.
In the original incident, plaintiff attorneys charged that Dr. Sobieraj had deviated from treatment standards when reviewing X-rays of Burns’ lungs, failing to identify an abnormality as potentially cancerous. Such an “error in judgment charge” is typically appropriate when a physician has several options and exercises judgement to follow one course of action over another.
However, the appeals court charged that this is only appropriate in a narrow category of malpractice cases where there is evidence the doctor considered and chose among several medically acceptable alternatives, the newspaper noted. The appeals court recently determined that this error in judgement charge was inappropriate, since there was no evidence introduced at trial that Sobieraj made a choice between medically acceptable alternatives.
“We conclude that the court’s error in giving the charge cannot be deemed harmless, and plaintiffs are thus entitled to a new trial,” the court wrote.
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Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.