A Frenchville woman was awarded $2.4 million after a Bangor hospital made a mistake during a routine procedure while she was under anesthesia in 2019, leading to lasting injuries to her left arm.
A jury decided Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center is responsible for the injury to the woman’s left arm and awarded $2.4 million for damages after deliberating Friday afternoon. They decided certified registered nurse anesthetist, Stacey Bruckler, a contracted employee, was not liable.
Brown filed a lawsuit in 2021 against the hospital and Bruckler. A settlement was not reached, so the lawsuit proceeded to trial. The jury heard from numerous witnesses and the woman, Louise Brown, during a five-day trial, before deliberations began Friday afternoon.
Brown, 67, was put under anesthesia for an endoscopic procedure at the hospital in February 2019. During that procedure, the medical staff failed to properly restrain Brown’s left arm, leading to crushing injuries, her attorney Taylor Asen said.
“That arm looked pretty bad,” Northern Light’s attorney Edward Gould said during closing arguments Friday. “It was badly bruised.”
Brown’s forearm was mottled with purple bruises, according to pictures shown during closing arguments. She also had some cuts. In the years since the injury, her arm has started to atrophy and is a darker color than her uninjured arm, Asen said.
Gould said the hospital accepts responsibility for causing Brown’s injuries and that it should be held accountable.
However, EMMC and Bruckler estimated the damages Brown should receive as significantly less than the $10 million Brown’s lawyers asked for, a combination of economic and human damages, such as past and future pain and mental anguish.
“The question is how do you put a monetary value on those physical and emotional damages?” Asen said. “How do you balance the scales?”
Gould asked jurors to award Brown $126,184.
Brown has complex regional pain syndrome, a type of chronic nerve pain, according to her doctors and experts at the trial. Her continuing pain is disproportionate to the event that caused the injury, Asen said. Her arm hurts when clothing touches it and she cannot use her arm for daily tasks.
Her pain is constant and never fully goes away, Asen said.
The hospital challenged how bad Brown’s pain actually is and had a private investigator follow her around, Gould said.
“I can’t tell you whether or not those words that came out of her mouth were the truth or not,” Gould said. “Whether or not she’s actively trying to deceive. I can’t do that because I can’t read her mind. None of us can.”
A video from the private investigator showed Brown using her left arm to open a car door one time. The investigation followed her around for more than 100 hours, Asen said. Gould also pointed out she testified while wearing a long sleeve shirt.
“They’ve done everything they could think of to shirk responsibility,” Asen said. “Dredging up everything they could think of to discredit her.”