ROCHESTER — The Appellate Division of State Supreme Court,
Fourth Judicial Department, voted 3 to 2 last week to award a town
of Olean man $24 million because he was misdiagnosed for a brain
aneurysm in 1998 that led to a stroke, which left him
paralyzed.
The Appellate Court upheld an earlier jury award worth more than
$18 million plus other costs and interest in awarding Daniel C.
Oakes of Olean, who suffered a paralyzing stroke three weeks after
going to Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital in Amherst on July 18,
1998, for two CT scans, one that apparently was never read.
“The medical system failed Dan Oakes, but the legal system didn’t,”
his attorney, Francis M. Letro, said in an interview with the Times
Herald on Tuesday.
The lawsuit was filed against Kaleida Health Care System, which is
liable for the majority of the court verdict; Mr. Oakes’ Olean
physician, Dr. Rajnikant Patel; and Dr. Satish K. Mongia, a
Jamestown neurologist .
The Appellate Division upheld the April 2009 jury verdict and $18
million award made in a civil trial before Supreme Court Justice
Timothy J. Drury.
A year earlier, another jury awarded Mr. Oakes and his wife, Lisa,
$5 million, which was appealed by Mr. Letro as inadequate. The
judge also considered it inadequate and ordered Kaleida to pay Mr.
Oakes $18 million or he would order a new trial, Mr. Letro
explained. In the trial before Judge Drury, “They came back with
$18 million, which is what we thought should have been the first
verdict.”
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