Published: November 03, 2009 11:43 pm      

Jury finds in surgeon’s favor

Richman cleared of negligence in long-running malpractice case

CATLETTSBURG — A Boyd Circuit Court jury has cleared a former heart surgeon at King’s Daughters Medical Center of negligence in a long-running medical malpractice case.

Jurors deliberated for about 45 minutes on Monday before returning a unanimous verdict in favor of Dr. Michael Richman. The verdict concluded a three-week trial.

Two other physicians named in the suit, Larry M. Fraley and Richard Paulus, had earlier reached out-of-court settlements with the plaintiff, Jeffrey Franz filed the lawsuit in December 2001 on behalf of his mother, the late Elwanda G. Franz. Terms of those settlements were not disclosed.

The lawsuit stemmed from an operation that was performed on Elwanda Franz in February of 2001. Jeffrey Franz alleged that in administering anesthesia to his mother, Fraley punctured her superior vena cava — the large-diameter artery that carries de-oxygenated blood from the upper half of the body to the heart’s right atrium — causing a massive laceration, according to court records.

Jeffrey Franz also claimed that while Richman did locate and repair the damage, he was negligent because he failed to do so quickly enough.

Elwanda Franz died 16 months after the surgery at the age of 79. Her son alleged in the lawsuit that the damage her body sustained during the operation significantly shortened her life.

Elwanda Franz underwent open-heart surgery after diagnostic tests revealed she had a 50 percent blockage of her left main coronary artery and a 90 percent blockage of her left anterior descending artery.

KDMC and Paulus’ practice, Cumberland Cardiology PSC, also were named as defendants in the suit. However, the claim against the hospital was not at issue in the trial. Judge C. David Hagerman separated that claim from the remainder of the case to be tried separately.

In so doing, Hagerman ruled essentially that the attorneys for the plaintiff would have to prove negligence against the doctors before the hospital could be found negligent.

The defendants maintained that KDMC was negligent in its hiring, retention and credentialing of Richman.

Cumberland Cardiology was a party to the case because the plaintiff maintained that Richman was an employee of the practice. However, the defendants maintained during the trial that Richman, who now lives and practices in California, merely had an office-sharing arrangement with the practice.

Paulus was named in the suit because the plaintiff alleged that he should not have allowed Elwanda Franz to undergo surgery due to her being on Plavix, an anti-clotting drug.

Jeffrey Franz, a former banker, and his son, Jason, were the developers of Lakinview Heights, a housing project that became embroiled in a morass of legal disputes involving contractors, suppliers, property owners and creditors after the Franz Group LLC and its subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy.

Hagerman scheduled post-trial motions in the case for Dec. 3.