A toddler had ingested chips of lead based paint from his rented home. His elevated blood lead levels showed up on a routine check done by a city agency. The elevated levels were reported to an inner city hospital. The parents were contacted and persuaded to admit the child for chelation therapy. Chelation therapy is a process using chemicals to remove lead from the bloodstream. Unless closely monitored, the process is life threatening.

On the fifth and last day of therapy, while receiving the chemical through an "IV" line, the child coded; that is, his heart rate suddenly dropped and stopped.

A "stat code" was called, emergency physicians rushed to his bedside and eventually the child was revived. Unfortunately his brain had been deprived of oxygen for so long that he was literally a vegetable. He required total mechanical life support. Since there was no hope that he would ever be anything even resembling a human being, the life support was discontinued on the 12th day and he died.

We filed suit on behalf of the parents against the hospital and certain nurses.

In pre-trial proceedings, the nurse in charge of administering the chelation chemicals on that fatal day, testified that she was at his bedside when the heart monitor alarmed and showed that his heart had slowed and stopped. She also testified that she had immediately called the resuscitation team. The nursing notes appeared to confirm her story.

However, our experts were ready to testify that the child's heart rate could not have dropped so suddenly, unless the chemicals were being administered too fast. They were also ready to testify that if the accident had happened as the nurse testified, the child could not have suffered such massive brain damage. In other words, the nurse on duty had left the child unattended and she had falsified the medical records.

How could we prove that her story was false? We re-examined the hospital chart, the nursing notes, and all the documents prepared by the hospital staff. Suddenly we found it! An admission note, written by a staff doctor when the child was taken to the intensive care unit after being resuscitated, had a word crossed out. The word was "found". When the word was left in place it showed that the child "was found limp and lifeless".

When the word was deleted it said the child "was limp and lifeless". When questioned, the staff doctor admitted that the change had been made on the orders of the hospital risk manager, the person in charge of reducing or eliminating the hospitals liability for its mistakes. The hospital made no offer to settle the case.

We went to trial. On the third day of the trial we called the staff doctor to testify how she had rigged the records to hide the nurses wrongdoing. The case settled just before Mr. Hamilton started questioning the staff doctor.

Due to a confidentiality agreement, Rizio & Hamilton cannot reveal the amount the case settled for. However, we can say that the settlement was for a substantial sum.

If we hadn't gone over those records time after time, the hospital would have gotten away with causing another baby's death, without having to pay one red cent.

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