News

High drama, high stakes in store in malpractice case

Dr. Michael Rosner (left) confers with defense attorney Scott Stevenson. Plaintiff Billy Justus leaves Henderson County Courthouse with attorney Wade Byrd.

By Bill Moss, Published: August 10, 2014

Byrd, a Fayetteville native and Wake Forest law graduate, said in a 1997 profile in the Fayetteville Observer that he chose his medical malpractice specialty because of the long odds plaintiffs face.

Wade Byrd"The doctors had the best lawyers in the state; they had access to any expert they wanted and the statistics showed that the doctors won those cases 80 to 90 percent of the time," he said. "The challenge was huge and it attracted me to that area."
This case, he told prospective jurors, is "about a surgeon performing unnecessary surgeries — that is, surgeries that are not medically indicated. We contend he did not tell his patients and was consistently misleading about the need. Park Ridge knew that Dr. Rosner was doing traditional surgeries but was doing it for abnormal reasons and yet no safeguards were put in place to observe Dr. Rosner and Dr. Rosner was not being overseen or supervised by someone with expertise."
The surgery, he went on, was "human experimentation, which they had a right to know. We contend the hospital had a duty to pay attention to this. We contend that the real motive was money. We can put on evidence to show the surgery made millions of dollars for both Dr. Rosner and this hospital."
In pretrial pleadings, Byrd argues that Rosner "fraudulently induced Pam Justus to submit to two surgeries," obtained her consent through "deception, or misrepresentation of material facts," and "perpetrated fraud ... by failing to disclose the experimental, controversial and/or unproven nature and foreseeable consequences of the two surgeries." Park Ridge and its parent Adventist Health, the couple say, "participated in" or "condoned the aggravating conduct." Rosner "performed an extraordinarily high number of these rare surgical procedures," the plaintiffs say. The hospital "knew or should have known that these unnecessary surgeries were being performed. Yet Dr. Rosner performed them anyway, while the other defendants deliberately turned a blind eye towards this pattern of malfeasance, for the sake of financial gain."