Lawyer urges high court to award damages to victim's estate
By Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The estate of a woman who died five years after she suffered medical malpractice should be able to collect damages for her pain and suffering, a lawyer told the state Supreme Court on Wednesday.

Timothy Aiken, a lawyer for the estate of Helen Bartholomew, said medical malpractice victims and their survivors should be able to collect damages both for their pain as well as for wrongful death.
He urged the court to overturn its two-year-old decision that malpractice victims and their estates can collect damages only once — either for the malpractice itself or for wrongful death, not both.

But attorney Steven P. Means, representing the state's patient compensation fund in the case, said the Legislature clearly intended to allow malpractice victims to collect only once.

Bartholomew sought care at a walk-in clinic in 1998 for pain in her chest and left shoulder and arm. She was misdiagnosed and suffered a heart attack the next day. She was forced to stay in a nursing home until she died in 2003.

Bartholomew's husband, Robert, sued the doctor responsible and the Wisconsin Patients Compensation Fund. A jury awarded a total of $1.2 million for her pain and suffering and his loss of companionship before and after her death.

But a judge cut the award to $350,000 — the maximum allowed for a wrongful death claim — after the state Supreme Court's 2004 decision that damage awards could not be stacked for wrongful death and pain and suffering.

Aiken asked the court to overturn that decision and award the estate the additional $850,000 the Kenosha County jury had awarded.

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