A Cook County jury awarded $12 million to the family of a Hoffman Estates woman who died after doctors failed to treat her lung cancer.
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On Thursday, jurors found that doctors Wanda Iza, Jeffrey E. Chung, Jeffrey Lindahl and the Alexian Brothers Medical Group did not properly treat Doris Newberry after a lump was discovered in her lung.
According to a copy of the 2014 lawsuit filed by Newberry’s daughter, Renee Chiero, X-rays were taken of the victim’s chest after she went to the emergency room of St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates in July 2010 complaining of pain in her left ear.
Chung identified a “non-specific density” in the left upper lobe of her lungs, but when Newberry met with Iza the following month, Iza “assured Doris (Newberry) that the radiological findings … were normal,” according to the complaint.
In 2011, Lindahl took over Newberry’s care, but neither he nor Iza followed up on the 2010 X-ray. In December 2012, a biopsy showed the mass was cancerous, and Newberry died of stage 4 lung cancer at age 70 in September 2013, according to the complaint.
Jurors awarded $10 million to the plaintiff for Newberry’s pain and suffering, disfigurement and loss of life, and an additional $2 million to her family for loss of society with the victim as well as their grief and sorrow, according to court records.
“We trust doctors to figure out what’s wrong and to begin treatment right away, to give patients the best possible chance at survival or, at the very least, the best possible quality of life in the time they have,” one of the plaintiff’s attorneys, Michael Bonamarte, said in a written statement following the judgment. “When doctors don’t live up to the trust we put in them, they have to face consequences.”
Attorneys for the defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.
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