Testimony continues in wrongful-death trial
Wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Richard Rollison IV, 24
Testimony continues in Trumbull wrongful death suit
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A civil trial entered its second week Monday in the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Richard Rollison IV, 24, who died at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital after being transported initially to St. Joseph Warren Hospital.
The trial is in the courtroom of Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court.
Rollison suffered gunshot wounds at the Sunoco gas station on West Market Street early Oct. 26, 2013. TaShawn “Boo” Walker, 27, of Baytown, Texas, was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Rollison’s death and was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
The lawsuit accused the Clemente-McKay Ambulance Service and Humility of Mary Health Partners, now known as Mercy Health, and several doctors of negligence in in Rollison’s death.
Clemente-McKay has since settled out of court for $35,000, and the doctors have been dismissed from the suit.
Testimony Monday focused on the decision made to take Rollison to St. Joseph Warren Hospital initially instead of St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital, the care he received at St. Joseph’s and the lack of a trauma surgeon at St. Joseph’s when Rollison arrived.
The lawsuit alleged St. Joseph’s accepted Rollison as a patient knowing that it had no available trauma surgeon.
Testimony indicated the hospital’s on-call surgeon was handling another surgery, leaving a hospital’s emergency-room physician to handle Rollison’s care.
St. Elizabeth’s is a Level 1 trauma facility, which is a higher level than St. Joseph’s, which is a Level 3, according to testimony.
Dr. Christopher Kaufman of Pittsburgh, who has nearly 30 years of experience as a trauma surgeon and was a reviewer for the American College of Surgeons’ “green book,” which sets the standards for trauma-center structure and processes, said a Level 1 facility typically has a trauma surgeon available at all times.
Dr. Kaufman testified as an expert witness for Humility of Mary.
Dr. Kaufman testified there are a lot of “gray areas” in the medical field, such as whether to take a patient to the nearest hospital or to the nearest Level 1 facility, which would have been St. Elizabeth’s.
Knowing what he knows now, St. Elizabeth’s would have been the better choice for Rollison, but ambulance personnel felt Rollison needed “immediate care,” Dr. Kaufman said.
The doctor at St. Joseph “did all the things we would do in a Level 1,” but a Level-1 facility might have had roughly a dozen other people around to assist, which might have made treatment happen faster, Dr. Kaufman said.
“All procedures done were appropriate. It would have been hard for anybody to do a lot better,” he said of St. Joseph’s.
The trial resumes today.