Appeals Court Sides With Doctor
The doctor who treated a Hendricks County Council member before he died in 2000 will not have to pay damages, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled.
A Hendricks County jury had awarded $375,000 to the estate of H. Hunt Palmer following a malpractice lawsuit against Dr. Mark A. Muckway, Avon, in September 2005.
But Judge Jeffrey Boles reduced the amount to zero because Palmer’s family had reached two out-of-court monetary settlements with other defendants in the lawsuit before the trial. Terms of those settlements were not made public.
Under a malpractice provision known as “set-off,” Boles ruled that Muckway gets credit for those agreements and that Palmer’s claims are satisfied by them. The appellate court agreed, even though the jury found that Muckway and Comprehensive Neurological Services, Avon, had erred in treating Palmer.
The appeals court affirmed Boles’ ruling in an 18-page opinion Friday.
“We did not agree that ‘set-off’ applied, but that’s what the court found,’’ said Michael S. Miller, the attorney for Linda A. Palmer, H. Hunt Palmer’s widow.
Roger K. Kanne, Muckway’s attorney, said the jury was not aware of the outside agreements when it determined its award. He said Palmer sought more than $1 million in damages.
Muckway had prescribed Palmer medication to treat multiple sclerosis when he came to see him with double vision, trouble speaking and memory loss in June of 2000. The day after Palmer started taking the drug, he felt sick. The next day he went into a 30-minute seizure, and Muckway treated him in the emergency room.
Two days later, Palmer, 44, died. An autopsy concluded he had a virus of the brain, but the cause of death was undetermined