Jury awards $358,000 to woman for botched breast-reconstruction surgery
Mary Jenkins, a breast-cancer survivor who founded a nonprofit group that offers financial assistance to cancer patients, has won a $358,000 jury verdict against a Delaware County physician who botched her breast-reconstruction surgery.
"I'll be using quite a bit of it to help further the cause of the organization," Jenkins said on Friday.
A Franklin County Common Pleas jury returned the verdict on Tuesday after a week-long trial before visiting Judge John F. Bender.
Jenkins, a North Side resident, founded Christians Overcoming Cancer in 2006 after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and got laid off from her job. She discovered that no organizations existed to help pay day-to-day expenses, such as rent and utilities, for cancer patients facing financial hardships.
The organization raises about $40,000 a year through various fundraisers, she said, and pays bills for 20 to 25 people who are "in active treatment and in need."
Surgeons removed Jenkins' right breast in 2006, but she put off having reconstructive surgery until meeting Dr. K. Roxanne Grawe in 2012.
Grawe performed a procedure at Mount Carmel St. Ann's in which a flap from Jenkins' abdomen was removed and used to construct a right breast. The flap, however, died after becoming congested with blood and was removed two days later by Grawe.
Jenkins was left with "a gaping hole in her chest that required extensive wound therapy," according to a pre-trial statement filed by her attorney, David Shroyer. She spent four months in a nursing facility while the wound healed.
The lawsuit, filed in 2014, said that Grawe's attempts to address the complications, which included leech therapy rather than surgery, "were professionally negligent and fell well below accepted standards of medical care."
Six of the eight jurors, the minimum necessary for a verdict, found that Grawe was negligent because of her "failure to diagnose and treat the complication."
The jury awarded Jenkins $58,600 for medical expenses and $300,000 in non-economic damages. The award could be reduced by an Ohio law that caps non-economic damages at $250,000.
On Friday, Sabrina Sellers, one of Grawe's attorneys, said she couldn't comment on the cap on damages or the possibility of an appeal because a final entry hasn't been filed in the case.
"Dr. Grawe is an excellent member of the medical community, and we still feel she met the standard of care," Sellers said.
Last year, doctors diagnosed cancer in Jenkins' left breast and she underwent a second mastectomy. She is cancer free, she said, and has no plans for additional reconstructive surgery.
"What I went through with my two mastectomies doesn't even compare" with the ordeal of her failed reconstruction, she said. "This was 10 times worse."
But Shroyer, her attorney, said her experience shouldn't discourage others from considering breast-reconstruction surgery.
"This is a very rare complication and our claim was that there was a failure to timely treat it," Shroyer said. "She should have been in and out of the hospital in a few days."
@johnfutty
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Jury awards $358,000 to woman for botched breast-reconstruction surgery
