Jury says St. Joseph Warren Hospital did not commit medical malpractice
Staff report
WARREN
After an eight-day trial, a jury has ruled in favor of St. Joseph Warren Hospital in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
The complaint accused the hospital of failing to take the necessary steps to keep Richard Rollison IV, 24, alive after he had been shot at a Warren gas station in 2013.
The jury deliberated about four hours before deciding that the Rollison family was not entitled to any financial compensation from the hospital.
The suit also named the Clemente-McKay Ambulance Service, St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital and two doctors at St. Joseph Warren Hospital as defendants.
But the ambulance company settled out of court for $35,000, and St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital and the doctors were dismissed from the suit.
It accused St. Joseph of accepting Rollison as a patient knowing that it had no available trauma surgeon and failing to notify the ambulance squad of the need to take Rollison to another hospital.
After accepting Rollison as a patient, hospital staff failed to notify a backup trauma surgeon of the unavailability of the on-call trauma surgeon, the suit said.
But Atty. Marshall Buck, who represented the St. Joseph Warren Hospital, said the hospital staff did the best it could to improve Rollison’s blood pressure to prepare him for transfer to St. Elizabeth’s, but it was not as well equipped as St. Elizabeth because St. Joseph had no trauma surgeon or thoracic surgeon available. Rollison should have gone to St. Elizabeth first, Buck said.
Rollison went into cardiac arrest and died as he was arriving at St. Elizabeth, Buck said. St. Joseph was not legally allowed to ask the EMTs to redirect Rollison to St. Elizabeth, he said.