Practice Areas

Medical Malpractice

  • Overview

    When patients suffer serious injuries or death because of medical negligence, Arrowood LLP is prepared to help. The firm’s attorneys have successfully represented plaintiffs in hundreds of medical malpractice cases against doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals in Massachusetts and around the country. Arrowood LLP attorneys have tried many of these cases to verdict, obtaining some of the highest medical malpractice awards in Massachusetts in recent years. Arrowood LLP is widely respected as among the best plaintiffs’ medical malpractice law firms in Massachusetts. The attorneys at Arrowood LLP have experience handling a wide variety of medical malpractice matters, including failure to diagnose/delayed diagnosis, medication errors, inadequate/negligent treatment, improper anesthesia administration, surgical errors, birth injuries, and medical provider abuse or neglect.

    The firm accepts cases from a number of specialties, including:

    • Anesthesiology
    • Cardiology
    • Dentistry
    • Dermatology
    • Emergency Medicine
    • Family Medicine
    • Gastroenterology
    • Geriatric Medicine
    • Gynecology
    • Internal Medicine
    • Nephrology
    • Neurology
    • Nursing
    • Obstetrics
    • Oncology
    • Ophthalmology
    • Oral Surgery
    • Orthopedics
    • Pathology
    • Pediatrics
    • Physical Therapy
    • Pulmonology
    • Primary Care
    • Psychiatry
    • Radiology
    • Surgery
    • Urology

    Whatever the specialty, Arrowood LLP attorneys have the knowledge and resources necessary to successfully represent individuals who have suffered medical negligence. The firm also handles dental malpractice, nursing malpractice, and malpractice by associated providers, such as physician’s assistants, and midwives. Unlike many law firms that handle plaintiffs’ medical malpractice cases, every attorney at Arrowood LLP is fully prepared to bring its cases to trial should the need arise.

    Arrowood LLP’s expertise includes, but is not limited to:

    • Birth Injuries
    • Wrongful Death
    • Anesthesia
    • Misdiagnosis, Delay in Diagnosis, Failure to Diagnose
    • Lab Results Misread or Ignored
    • Medication Error
    • Pharmacy Error
    • Surgical Error
    • LASIK Eye Surgery
  • Cases & Results
    • $7.175 Million jury verdict ($10.5 Million with interest) against a nurse on behalf of a family with a child who developed kernicterus (brain damage) after the nurse discharged the child from a hospital without taking a bilirubin test despite the fact that the child had developed jaundice before discharge.
    • $5.25 Million settlement for a child who suffered brain damage as a result of the failure to diagnose necrotizing fasciitis in his pregnant mother, as well as for the significant injuries suffered by the mother as a result of the delayed diagnoses.
    • $5 Million settlement for the family of a child who developed kernicterus and cerebral palsy as a result of a failure to treat hyperbilirubinemia in an appropriate and timely manner following his pre-mature birth.
    • $5 Million settlement for a family with a child who developed kernicterus and cerebral palsy after he was discharged from the hospital following his birth without appropriate treatment for hyperbilirubinemia.
    • $4.4+ Million verdict where mother of two complained of a painful and growing lump in her right breast but her primary care physicians failed to timely refer her for imaging or appropriate medical treatment with a specialist to rule out breast cancer, allowing her undiagnosed cancer to metastasize and cause her death at age 34. Claims were brought against the United States under the Federal Tort Claim Act as the defendants were federal employees.
    • $3 Million settlement for wrongful death where gastroenterologist failed to appropriately treat 37-year-old’s ulcerative colitis, ultimately causing death by stroke. The deceased was a married father of two.
    • $3 Million settlement in a case in which it was alleged that a neonatal intensive care unit nurse administered a massive overdose of pancuronium bromide, or Pavulon, to a baby who was born prematurely at 24 weeks. As a result of the overdose, the baby developed kernicterus.
    • $3 Million settlement for a family with a child who developed kernicterus and cerebral palsy due to the defendant health care providers’ negligence.
    • $2 Million settlement at mediation in wrongful death case where cardiologist failed to send a twenty-five-year-old patient abnormal echocardiogram results indicative of cardiomyopathy (a potentially fatal cardiac condition), and patient was therefore unaware of cardiac condition, was not treated or monitored by a cardiologist, and died as a result of his cardiac condition at twenty-nine years old.
    • $2 Million settlement concerning misdiagnosis of a large lump on a married 22-year-old’s thumb as benign when it was, instead, an aggressive epithelioid sarcoma that later metastasized and caused the young man to suffer amputation of his arm, chronic pain, breathing problems, depression, and ultimately his death.
    • $1.9+ Million ($2.9 Million with interest) verdict against an OB/GYN for medical malpractice resulting in the wrongful death of a 32-year-old 38-week pregnant wife and mother of a 4-year-old child. This was the 11th highest jury verdict in Massachusetts in 2008.
    • $1.75 Million settlement (before discovery commenced) of a wrongful death case involving a 63-year-old woman who died from complications from an incorrectly performed gastric bypass as well as three years of vomiting, nausea, fever and bouts of aspiration pneumonia suffered after the operation and before her death.
    • $1.6+ Million ($2.4 Million with interest) verdict against an internal medicine practitioner for medical malpractice resulting in the wrongful death of a 22-year-old college basketball player from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).
    • $1.6 Million settlement for a 38 year old woman who suffered disabling injuries to her hand as a result of an infiltrated intravenous solution into the compartments of her hand, resulting in an injury known as “acute compartment syndrome”.
    • $1.6 Million settlement (shortly after the lawsuit was filed) arising out of the death of a software engineer in his 30s resulting from a pulmonary embolism from a blood clot in his calf (deep vein thrombosis or “DVT”) after arthroscopic knee surgery which was undiagnosed by his physical therapist.
    • $1.25 Million settlement prior to closing arguments during trial as a result of the death of a 33 year old architect from complications of Guillain-Barré syndrome which was improperly treated by a pulmonary physician and neurologist.
    • $1.1 Million jury verdict on behalf of a woman who was injured during a kidney surgery performed by the former Chief of Urology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
    • $1.01 Million settlement on behalf of a 29 year old woman who suffered a debilitating stroke during the delivery of twins.
    • Two $1 Million settlements for women based on their physicians’ failure to diagnose breast cancer.
    • $1 Million settlement on the second day of trial as a result of the death of a 15 year old girl from pneumonia which was undiagnosed in an emergency room.
    • $1 Million settlement where defendant failed to inform 72-year-old married woman of nodules on her lungs and failed to properly follow-up on the same, allowing patient’s cancer to go undiagnosed until it had already metastasized to her liver, bones, adrenal glands, and lymph nodes. Claims were brought by both the woman (who died prior to settlement) and her husband.
    • $750,000 settlement on behalf of a family of a man in his early 40’s who died of a heart attack, which should have been diagnosed by his treating physician when he complained of chest pains earlier in the month.
    • $700,000 settlement for a client who claimed that the defendant neurosurgeon’s negligence caused or substantially contributed to a three-year delay in the diagnosis of the plaintiff’s multiple sclerosis, during which time the plaintiff’s MS progressed untreated. During that three-year delay in diagnosis, the defendant also performed unnecessary brain surgery on the plaintiff that resulted in post-surgical issues.
    • $600,000 settlement for a client who suffered partial loss of vision following LASIK eye surgery procedures.
    • $500,000 settlement with two defendants just prior to trial. Represented client in wrongful death case involving suicide of client’s 29-year-old son who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was being treated at an in-patient psychiatric facility at the time of his death. We took the case through discovery, which involved twenty-two depositions across multiple states, and hired experts including a Harvard psychiatrist and a digital forensics analyst.
    • $500,000 settlement for a client who was injured during a laparoscopic gall bladder surgery.
    • $500,000 settlement arising out of the death of a 13-year-old girl due to failure of her pediatricians to diagnose and treat a shunt malfunction.
    • $475,000 (plus $171,000 in interest) arbitration award against an obstetrician for failure to perform a caesarean section on a woman who delivered an abnormally large baby resulting in shoulder dystocia, Erbs palsy and brachial plexus injuries to the child.
    • $450,000 pre-suit settlement arising out of a sciatic nerve injury suffered by a 64- year-old man during hip replacement surgery.
    • $400,000 settlement on behalf of a family of a child who was stillborn as a result of an obstetrician’s failure to perform a caesarean section.
    • $315,000 pre-suit settlement for a 48-year-old woman who underwent an unnecessary hysterectomy after a lab error involving a cross-contamination of pathology slides led to a mistaken diagnosis of endometrial cancer.
    • $315,000 pre-suit settlement for a 67-year-old woman with back pain who had surgery performed at the wrong level of her back, requiring a second surgery.
    • $250,000 pre-suit settlement for a 62-year-old woman who suffered pain and vision difficulties after Mohs and lid reconstruction surgery for basal cell carcinoma of the left inner canthus.
    • $250,000 settlement for a young mother who lost mobility after receiving cutting-edge radiation therapy for non-fatal tumors in her leg.
    • $150,000 settlement where defendants timely failed to diagnose and treat 12-year-old girl for appendicitis until after appendix ruptured and caused further complications.
    • In a nationally publicized case, a verdict on behalf of a man against an IVF clinic that created his child from frozen embryos without his consent in an amount equal to his total costs for support and education of the child.