A California appeals panel has overturned a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a man who claimed he suffered “excruciating pain and trauma” when a worker at South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach tripped
on a hose that yanked a catheter from his penis.
We'll continue once you're done holding your ween and whining “Ow!”
]
Gregory Harry, a quadriplegic who relied on catheters to urinate while being treated at South Coast in June 2009, was in his hospital room when a custodial worker tripped over the hose to his hose. A nurse later gave the patient pain medication and tried several times without success to re-connect the
catheter before a urologist was summoned to seal the deal.
Harry's lawsuit cited “excruciating pain and
trauma, permanent injury and loss of functionality,” and also claimed the accident worsened his problems with incontinence.
But Orange County Superior Court Judge Franz Miller sided with South Coast's attorneys, whose experts had testified the mishap did not fall below the standard of care.
Last week, a three-judge panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeals in Santa Ana ruled the case should not be dismissed, citing the difference of opinions of various experts on catheter-tastrophes like poor Harry's.
Legend has it his scream from the moment of yanktitude still echoes in Laguna Beach coves.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.