Georgia Court of Appeals Decides that a Trial Judge Should Not Have Dismissed a Medical Malpractice Lawsuit by an Asplenic Patient Who Claimed Her Primary Care and OB-GYN Physicians Failed to Protect Her from an Overwhelming Post-Splenectomy Infection
In a case being handled by Ragland & Jones, LLP, the Georgia Court of Appeals has recently held that a Fulton County Superior Court Judge should not have dismissed the malpractice claims of an asplenic patient who alleged that her longtime primary care physician and OB-GYN physicians had failed to recommend steps to protect her against an overwhelming post-splenectomy infection (OPSI). On March 27, 2008, the Georgia Court of Appeals handed down its 4-3 decision in Lyon v. Schramm, et al., 291 Ga.App. 48, 661 S.E.2d 178 (2008). The majority held that Georgia’s five year medical malpractice statute of repose, O.C.G.A. § 9-3-71(b), did not bar the Plaintiff’s claims even though the Defendants first failed to start protecting the Plaintiff against the risk of OPSI more than 5 years prior to the filing of her lawsuit.
The case arose from a medical malpractice lawsuit filed by Atlanta Attorney Daniel Ragland on behalf of a severely injured woman and her husband in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia on August 29, 2006. That lawsuit alleged that because of injuries she suffered at age 17 in a 1982 car accident, the plaintiff's damaged spleen had to be surgically removed in a procedure known as a splenectomy. As a result, the plaintiff lived her adult years without a spleen which left her at risk for developing a life threatening fulminant condition known as “overwhelming post-splenectomy infection,” a rapidly developing septicaemia which can result when an asplenic individual is exposed to certain encapsulated bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis, or Haemophilus influenzae. These pathogens pose minimal risk to healthy and non-immunocompromised persons with fully functioning spleens.
