A jury ruled that a Connecticut surgical practice failed to diagnose and treat a blood clot in a man’s leg after a knee replacement, resulting in his wrongful death.
Orthopaedic Sports Specialists of Glastonbury has been ordered to pay $8.5 million to the estate and widow of Peter Sobin, 61, who died in 2015 after developing a clot in his calf, his lawyer said.
Edward Mayer of Danaher Lagnese of Hartford, which represented Orthopaedic Sports Specialists, said in an email he would appeal the verdict.
Sobin, an architect who was active in golf and youth hockey, “had struggled with knee pain for many years, going all the way back to sports injuries,” Chris Mattei, of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, said Wednesday.
“He had tried some pretty conservative treatment, short of surgery, including injections in his knee, pain medication for his knees and some physical therapy and it just didn’t work,” Mattei said. “And so he had been playing through the pain for a long time and decided that he would get this knee-replacement surgery in September of 2015.”
After the surgery, Sobin went to his physical therapy appointments, located next to the surgical office, on Sept. 25 and 28, complaining of increasing pain and swelling in his calf, Mattei said. He was seen by physician assistant Erik Libby, who is named in the lawsuit along with Dr. Michael Joyce.
At both visits, Sobin was told to monitor his symptoms and that everything was normal, Mattei said. Sobin’s first follow-up appointment had been set for Oct. 1.
“On the night of Sept. 30, he’s in the kitchen with his son, and he’s feeling off and he tells his son he’s not feeling well,” Mattei said.
“The next morning he has a pulmonary embolism, and he wakes up to go to his follow-up appointment, and he’s short of breath, essentially starts hyperventilating or suffocating. … He’s taken to the hospital and he dies,” he said.
Mattei said when Sobin complained of pain and swelling he should have been given an ultrasound, which is “highly effective at identifying clots. And when you have a clot that’s identified by ultrasound, the treatment is emergency hospitalization, where they put you on aggressive anticoagulants and can break up the clot.”
He said it is “reliable life-saving treatment and the standard of care to get an ultrasound in this case.”
“Deep vein thrombosis is so well known as a potential consequence of the surgery that, although pulmonary embolism is relatively rare … one of the only things that can kill you after a knee-replacement surgery is a blood clot that leads to a pulmonary embolus, and that’s why you have to have such a low threshold for getting an ultrasound,” Mattei said.
He said Orthopaedic Sports Specialists acknowledged that, if someone complains of calf pain or swelling, an ultrasound is ordered, but argued that Sobin “never came in to be seen.”
“It really was, in our view, a pretty offensive, I would say, way to respond to this case, essentially claiming that Peter, who is deceased and was described by them as a highly compliant patient, was essentially lying to his family and his family has been lying about whether he reported these complaints to Orthopaedic Sports Specialists,” Mattei said.
He said the jury took 45 minutes to return its verdict. The practice was ordered to pay $5.5 million to Sobin’s estate and $3 million to his wife, Linda Sobin, for loss of consortium.
Linda Sobin was not available for comment.
She said in a statement, “Orthopaedic Sports Specialists completely failed my husband, and I am grateful to the jury for holding them responsible for Peter’s death. Though nothing can bring Peter back, we hope this small measure of justice will force Orthopaedic Sports Specialists to be more careful in the future so that other families will not suffer the tremendous loss that we feel every day.”
In a statement, Mayer said, “Orthopaedic Sports Specialists is very disappointed with the verdict rendered. We have concerns in several respects about the trial that we will be raising on appeal and are looking forward to a fair Appellate review of the case.”
Ed Stannard can be reached at estannard@courant.com.
