Jury renders $68M against heart surgeon

A Fresno County Superior Court jury delivered $12.4 million in punitive damages in a medical malpractice case Tuesday, rounding out a verdict against a heart surgeon to a $68 million award.

The jury found that Fresno surgeon Pervaiz Chaudhry acted with "malice, oppression or fraud" when he left a 72-year-old patient during heart surgery to attend a meeting. As a result, patient Silvino Perez fell into a coma and suffered a global brain injury, leaving him in a vegetative state to this day, the jury found.

On Monday, Chaudhry was ordered to pay $25 million in total noneconomic damages each to the patient and to his wife, as well as $5.6 million in future economic damages.

After further deliberation, the jury returned Tuesday with the $12.4 million award to deter any future bad conduct. It also based its award on Perez's life expectancy of eight years, as well as a loss of consort to his wife, a disabled woman for whom he provided care.

Ricardo Echeverria, who represented Perez's family, said the doctor's conduct went beyond a simple mistake.

"I think the jury realized this was not just a mistake; this was an intentional decision to disregard patient safety. His reason was to leave for a business meeting to shake a cardiologist's hand," said Echeverria, a partner at Shernoff, Bidart & Echeverria LLP. Arteaga Alvarez v. Community Regional Medical Center, 13CECG03906 (Fresno Super. Ct., filed Feb 11, 2016).

Chaudhry's defense attorney, James Goodman of Hassard Bonnington LLP, declined to comment.

In 2012, Perez underwent a complicated open heart surgery at Fresno's Community Regional Medical Center that required, among other procedures, an aortic valve replacement, his attorneys said. Perez required extensive surgery and started to bleed, but by the time the bleeding abated, Perez suffered wide-ranging damage, according to his lawsuit.

Perez's family did not know that the doctor had walked out before completing the surgery until an unidentified medical provider tipped them off about a year and a half later, according to the lawsuit. Prior to that, the family was told the damage suffered by the plaintiff was due to standard complications for the surgery, the lawsuit said.

During the surgery, the plaintiffs' attorneys alleged, Chaudhry left Perez on the operating table in the care of a non-doctor assistant, who was ordered to close up his chest.

"The hospital rules are explicit and clear: A surgeon is to remain in the medical center until patient is stable in ICU. He never made it to ICU. He stayed on the operating table the whole time," Echeverria said.

Echeverria said he presented witness testimony showing that Chaudhry regularly left patients unattended. He said the doctor's misconduct was the result of spreading himself too thin, performing at one point 749 surgeries over two years.

"That's more than a surgery a day. One of his former colleagues said he told him he wanted to corner the cardiothoracic market in Fresno," said Echeverria.

The plaintiffs' trial counsel also included San Francisco's Jeff Mitchell of the Mitchell Law Group and Steve Heimberg of Heimberg Barr LLP in Los Angeles.

In a statement, Heimberg said, "This was an extremely complicated case. The jury was able to recognize that Dr. Chaudhry's behavior was absolutely not what we expect from anyone in the medical community, especially a surgeon who literally holds people's lives in his hands."

The trial, split into three phases before Judge Jeffrey Y. Hamilton Jr., lasted more than three months.

The hospital previously settled allegations of wrongdoing with the plaintiffs before trial but still faces six more lawsuits related to Chaudhry's conduct.