On May 12, 2022, New Castle personal injury attorneys Dallas Hartman and Patrick Sullivan secured a $1.6 million verdict against William Gilleland, Jr., M.D., in a medical malpractice trial. After a week long trial in Lawrence County presided over by The Honorable J. Craig Cox of The Common Pleas Court, the jury ruled that Dr. Gilleland violated his duty of care. The jury awarded $1,000,000.00 for past pain, suffering, and disfigurement and $600,000.00 for future pain, suffering, and disfigurement.

Our lawsuit alleged that during a surgery at Jameson Hospital to remove part of our client’s colon, Dr. Gilleland improperly stapled the colon to another bodily organ.  The improper connection created a fistula, which caused leakage from the colon into the surrounding anatomy. Our client underwent numerous procedures over a 14 month period to reverse some of the damage.

New Castle medical malpractice attorney Dallas Hartman stated that a doctor’s duty of care extends the entire length of a surgical procedure.  In this case, there was no dispute that the doctor performed the first half of the procedure properly, but the medical malpractice lawsuit arose because of the second portion of the surgery.  Attorney Dallas Hartman explained that doctors do not have a pass to perform the second half of a procedure improperly just because the first part of the surgery went fine.  Hartman said, “Hopefully this verdict will lead to doctors taking accountability when the care they provide their patients is clearly inadequate. The jury understood their job was to make up for the harm that our client suffered, not to punish the doctor, and they did exactly that in a fair and reasonable manner.”