By Shannon Duffy
U.S. Courthouse Correspondent

A Pennsylvania Couple was awarded more than $2.9 million on Wednesday by a federal court jury in Baltimore in their suit against two doctors and a hospital alleging wrongful death of their 8-year-old son.

But the award is almost sure to be reduced to $1.25 million due to Maryland’s caps on damages, according to plaintiffs’ attorney A. Roy DeCaro of Raynes McCarty Binder Ross & Mundy.

DeCaro represented William and Michelle Schmidt of Malvern, Pa., whose son, Evan, was born with Dandy Walker syndrome, a condition that can cause a build-up of fluid in the brain known as hydrocephalus.

As a child, Evan had a shunt installed that drained the fluid to the abdominal area, and he developed normally.

But in July 1995, when the Schmidts were on vacation in Ocean City, Md., Evan began complaining of headaches and was vomiting. His parents rushed him to the Peninsula Regional Medical Center after a closer hospital said it had no neurosurgeon on staff.

When they arrived at PRMC’s emergency room, Evan was alert and awake. But after waiting more than three hours to see a neurosurgeon, his vital signs were deteriorating.

As soon as the two doctors arrived—neurosurgeon Julius D. Zant and pediatrician Scott Hamilton—and the shunt was “tapped,” relieving the pressure, Evan’s condition improved.

But the dispute in the lawsuit focused on what happened next.

The Schmidts claimed that Zant told them he did not feel comfortable performing the operation to remove the blockage of the shunt and advised them to take Evan to Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia.

Although Zant had performed such operations before—a procedure known as a shunt “revision”—the Schmidts said he insisted that he could not operate on their son because he was not a pediatric neurosurgeon and because PRMC had no pediatric intensive care unit.

The Schmidts said they were soon told that a helicopter could take their son to CHOP. But the promise of a swift trip soon proved false, they said, as another three-hour wait ensued.

Attorney DeCaro told the jury that Hamilton should have objected, insisted on going or at least told Zant that he had been ousted from the flight.

During the flight, Evan’s condition worsened considerably, and by the time he arrived at CHOP, it was impossible to save him. He died on the operating table at about 2 a.m.

Two doctors testified as expert witnesses for the plaintiffs and opined that both Zant and Hamilton had committed malpractice.

Zant, they said, should have performed the shunt revision himself or at least clearly advised the Schmidts that their best chances for Evan’s survival would be to have the procedure done in Maryland.

Once he decided not to do the operation himself, they said, Zant should have taken steps to ensure that the pressure in Evan’s cranium did not reach dangerous levels before he reached Philadelphia. Among the ways to do so, they said, would have been to install a butterfly drainage system into the shunt reservoir or to externalize the shunt tubage for continuous drainage.

The hospital was also negligent, the experts said, because it violated its own patient transfer protocols by allowing an unreasonable amount of time to pass before the helicopter arrived.

The Schmidts also sued the helicopter operators—Medstar Medevac, Medlantic Healthcare Group Inc. and Washington Hospital Center—alleging that the late arrival played a role in their son’s demise.

But at trial, Medlantic’s lawyers, Paul A. Bechtel Jr. And Robert W. Hoffman of Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin, successful argued for dismissal of their clients as soon as the plaintiffs had rested their case.

Child’s Death

In its verdict, the jury awarded Evan Schmidt $500,000 for the pain and suffering he endured in the final hours of his life.

The jury then awarded $1.3 million in “solatium” damages to Michelle Schmidt and $1.15 million on the same claim to William Schmidt for a total award of $2.95 million.

Under Maryland law, damages in a wrongful death action are not based on lost wages, but instead are purely solatium, defined as an award of money intended to serve as solace for hurt feelings. Finding its origin in Scots law, “solatium” described awards to those who suffer personal injury, such as loss of limbs, as well as compensation to surviving relatives for the non-financial loss caused by the premature death of a relative.

DeCaro said Maryland law also imposes caps on damages and that the verdict for the Schmidts is sure to be molded. Although the $500,000 award to Evan mirrors the cap, the awards to each of his parents must be reduced to a total award of $750,000, he said.