Settlement agreement pays $200,000 from doctors to estate of military vet

Staff report

WARREN

A settlement agreement has been approved between father-and-son physicians Drs. Frank and Zachary Veres of Champion and the estate of a patient who committed suicide.

Trumbull County Probate Judge Thomas A. Swift has approved the settlement Monday that pays the estate of Michael Ecker of Champion $200,000.

The agreement settles a civil suit the estate filed in 2010 against the physicians that went to trial in January and ended in a mistrial after jurors reported that they were “hopelessly deadlocked.”

The trial, in the courtroom of Judge Ronald Rice of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court, included testimony indicating that Ecker returned home after serving in the U.S. military in Iraq.

Ecker, 25, committed suicide in 2009 in front of his father, of Champion, after he had been under the care of the physicians for about nine months.

The estate’s attorneys argued in the wrongful death lawsuit that the physicians failed to meet the expected standard of care for Ecker.

After the trial ended in a hung jury, the attorneys for the physicians and the estate worked out a settlement to avoid taking the matter back to trial.

The settlement pays the attorney for the Eckers, Brian Kopp, $110,000 — $33,686 for expenses and $76,314 for attorneys fees.

The remaining $90,000 is divided among the Ecker family members — $30,000 each to Ecker’s father, Matthew; mother, Cheryl Ecker; and brother, Mark Ecker.