Kansas City, MO personal injury attorney Jarrett Johnson talks about what happened in the hip replacement health care negligence case. He explains that the family of a woman was represented by a lawyer after she underwent a routine hip replacement procedure. She had a known drug allergy, which was noted in her medical file. After a successful surgery without complications, she was administered a drug to which she had previously experienced a catastrophic allergic reaction. On this occasion, she was given the same drug and subsequently coded and died.

The client was her husband, who had expected his wife to be home in two days but instead had to bury her over the Thanksgiving holiday. The lawyer was able to secure a settlement, largely due to his hypervigilance. Drawing from his past experience as a criminal trial lawyer, he used his contacts with the medical examiner’s office to provide crucial information about the woman’s prior drug allergy.

Without this intervention, the medical examiner might have performed an autopsy and concluded that she died of natural causes, given her other health conditions. Instead, the lawyer engaged with the medical examiner, provided past medical information related to the surgery, and this led to a favorable autopsy report that revealed the truth about the cause of death. As a result, a settlement was obtained against the hospital for the family.