Stephen and Lisa Speckman won their malpractice lawsuit Friday against the U and Intermountain Healthcare for not preventing a flesh-eating bacteria from damaging Lisa Speckman’s body.
A former nurse from LDS Hospital said that after Speckman gave birth to a baby girl two years ago at the hospital, her physicians ignored signs of an infection and failed to perform the appropriate tests. She contracted a flesh-eating disease that caused her to lose her legs below the knee, her arm up to the elbow, as well as her reproductive organs, gall bladder and a part of her large intestine.
Speckman and her husband filed the suit in September 2006 against her insurer, IHC Health Plans, which owns LDS Hospital. The U was named as a defendant because the school trained the medical staff, which she said neglected to treat her properly after her cesarean section in February 2006. The defendants included the U College of Nursing, the College of Medicine, the U hospital and U Hospital and Clinics.
The U’s Office of General Counsel would not disclose the U’s settlement amount. It will take the office at least two days to figure out what legal obligations it has toward the sensitive information, said U attorney Brian Watts.
The 3rd District Court issued a gag order on the settlement amount, said Leissa Wages, a spokeswoman for Moriarity, Badaruddin & Booke, which represented Speckman. Robert A. Clifford of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago also represented the plaintiff in her personal injury case because her family originally lived in Chicago.
The lawsuit also demanded an undisclosed amount of punitive monetary damages. Non-economic damages, such as disfigurement, cannot exceed $400,000 under Utah law. The court set the jury trial for July to determine the damages.
Speckman also sued Intermountain for not providing appropriate medical care for the past 18 months. It has cost Speckman more than $15 million in medical care during her lifetime, according to the lawsuit.
Representatives for U Health Care and Intermountain declined to comment about the lawsuit, as part of the settlement’s confidentiality agreement.