Veteran's suicide case against Champion docs goes to jury

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

The attorney representing two Champion physicians and the attorney representing the father of a Champion man who was their patient at the time he killed himself in 2009 squared off Thursday in front of a jury of eight.

Their closing arguments followed more than two days of testimony in Trumbull County Common Pleas Court in a wrongful-death case that will decide whether Dr. Frank G. Veres and his son, Dr. Zachary F. Veres, met the expected standard of care during nine months of treatment they gave Michael Ecker, 25, from January to August 2009.

Ecker killed himself Aug. 17, 2009, in front of his father, Mathew Ecker, who filed the lawsuit. Presiding over the case is Judge Ronald Rice.

Atty. Thomas Prislipsky, representing the doctors, said Michael Ecker, who came home from the war in Iraq with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic-stress disorder, died as a “casualty of the Iraq War,” not because his doctors failed to properly treat him.

None of the things he did in the final days of his life indicated that his life was “spiraling out of control” during the nine months that he saw the father-and-son doctors at their offices on Mahoning Avenue, Prislipsky said.

In the days before his death, he was making plans for a job, “acquiring things,” and had a plans for a date with his girlfriend. “Suicidal people don’t make plans,” he said.

“Sometimes, questions are unanswerable,” Prislipsky said of why Michael Ecker killed himself. His father said he didn’t notice Michael behaving in a way that would suggest he was suicidal, Prislipsky said.

The best explanation, Prislipsky implied, was that he acted “impulsively” after an argument with his brother a short time earlier.

Atty. Brian Kopp, conversely, representing Matthew Ecker, said the chart for Michael Ecker, which was filled out each month by whichever of the Veres doctors who saw him that month, paints a picture of physicians who failed to refer their patient to a psychiatrist when they should have.

The doctors’ records indicate they also failed to “chart” enough information to indicate that they had asked the right questions to uncover suicidal tendencies. And they failed to use a type of written test filled out by the patient that would have shown his mental state, Kopp said.

Saying the doctors saw a large number of patients every day, he asked the jurors, “Tell me how it is that this patient could be properly managed under those circumstances?”

The doctors never indicated in Ecker’s chart that they were aware that he had been diagnosed at a Veterans Affairs facility with post-traumatic stress disorder, a traumatic brain injury or severe depression until after he died, Kopp said.

“Either they didn’t appreciate him enough to put it on the chart, or they didn’t even know about it until post-death,” Kopp said.

The jury began deliberating in the case late Thursday and will resume this morning.