IN THE NEWS
Chicago Tribune - July 28, 1999
Hospital must pay damages in suicide
By Janan Hanna - Tribune Staff Writer
In what is believed to be the largest Illinois verdict of its kind, a Cook County jury has ordered Illinois Masonic Medical Center to pay $6.5 million in damages to the family of a suicide victim who was turned away from the hospital after requesting that she be admitted for psychiatric treatment.
The 11-member jury awarded the damages to Joseph and Frank Martino, brothers of Maryann Martino, who took her life on Feb 1, 1995, one day after attmepting to be admitted to Illinois Masonic, her attorney Kathleen Zellner said.
The sum is the highest ever awarded in a suicide-related case in Illinois, said John Kirkton, editor of the Law Bulletin Publishing Co.'s Jury Verdict Reporter, a publication that tracks verdicts throughout the state.
The jury approved damages totaling more than $13 million, but cut the amount in half, finding that the negligence was 50 percent attributable to the victim.
Officials at the hospital denied wrongdoing and said they plan to appeal the case.
The jury reached a verdict after hearing evidence that Martino, who had a 20-year history of mental disorders, was turned away after a 20-minute evaluation in the early-morning hours of Jan. 31. Zellner, of Naperville, said. One doctor told Martino that she did not qualify for admission, in part because she had no insurance, Zellner said.
Martino, 43, of Harwood Heights, had been admitted to psychiatric hospitals on four occasions in her life. Her first admission, ironically, was at Illinois Masonic, according to court records. And she had informed emergency room doctors that she was not taking the medication that was prescribed to her for manic-depressive disorder.
In their wrongful death and medical malpractice complaint against the hospital, the Martino family accused the hospital of failing to establish a rapport with Maryann and neglecting to get a detailed assessment of her medical history.
Instead, Martino, against her wishes, was sent home at 1 a.m. in a taxi by herself, Zellner said.
The following day, Martino hung herself in the garage of her home.
"Illinois Masonic Medical Center provided her with excellent care in our emergency room, and she was referred to the resources available to her when she left our hospital," Illinois Masonic's Dr. Robert Zadylak, senior vice president of Medical Affairs, said in a written statement. "Had Ms. Martino's condition warranted it after her thorough examination, she would have been admitted to our hospital."
The verdict, which was returned by the jury Monday evening, came on the eve of new allegations against the hospital involving another medical case.
The adoptive parents of a infant born at Illinois Masonic filed suit Tuesday in Cook County Circuit Court alleging the hospital and physicians incorrectly diagnosed the child as HIV positive. The child, born on Aug. 23, 1997, did not have the disease but was treated with the drug AZT, resulting in "adverse physical and mental effects," according to the lawsuit.
In the Martino case, Zellner said that jurors heard overwhelming evidence that the hospital's refusal to admit Martino prompted suicide.
"This sends a clear signal to hospitals that they cannot just summarily discharge mental health patients without doing a thorough diagnosis and gathering information from coilateral sources, like the family and psychiatrist," Zellner said. "And secondly, the verdict tells hospitals that they should never be discussing financial status with a patient. We believe that that spun her into a decline."
Joseph Martino, who testified during the six-day trial before Judge Paddy McNamara, said in an interview Tuesday that his sister was trying to get help for herself and that the system failed her.
"My brother and I decided to file a lawsuit against the hospital so that this would never happen again to others who would go to an emergency room with a mental illness," he said.
Tribune staff writer Robert Becker contributed to this report
