The Ohio Supreme Court has enacted a monumental change that impacts doctors and patients, shifting malpractice judgments from doctors’ insurers to the taxpayers. More info at WCPO. The decision limits recovery, ignores the right to a jury trial, and promotes injustice and inadequate compensation. The ruling means your private doctor can make a serious medical mistake - take off the wrong leg, operate on the wrong side of your brain - and you can never sue him in a jury trial. No other state has ruled the same way.
The Theobald ruling was named after Keith Theobald. Theobald was a healthy, fit husband and father of two young children, when an elderly driver clipped his pickup truck as he was driving to work 11 years ago. The impact flipped the truck across all lanes of the highway into a field, crashing in a stand of trees. Rescue workers found Theobald hanging upside down in a tree. He was paralyzed from his chest down.
Theobald and his wife, Jacqueline, took the news in stride. “I remember pre-operatively we said, ‘You can still do basketball with Jake (his then 5-year-old son) and watch TV and share things with the kids. We’ll get a van and we’ll adapt it.’” Keith Theobald agreed. He felt he could still work and live a full life. “I could do about anything. The wheelchair doesn’t hold you back.”
Theobald could see and use his arms after the accident. He was alert and ready the next day when doctors at University Hospital suggested surgery might improve his back injury.
Instead, he woke up in a different world. Not only was he still paralyzed, but now he also was blind and had lost the use of his arms. Medical records prove a series of mistakes during surgery led to oxygen deprivation and injuries worse than the accident had caused.
Trapped in darkness and unable to move on his own, Theobald will need round-the-clock care the rest of his life. He sued the doctors who did the surgery, only to get this devastating shock: The doctors weren't liable. They had immunity from all malpractice claims because they had students in the room with them.
In the Theobald case, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that doctors who sign with a state university like the University of Cincinnati to let medical students learn from them, even if that just mean one student walking in the room for a second, now are considered state employees. As such, they get immunity if anything goes wrong on the job, even in their private practices.
Jacqueline Theobald says, “The state didn’t come in and take care of Keith. The university didn’t come take care of him. This doctor took care of him. We’re suing the doctor.”
But the Ohio Supreme Court said they couldn’t sue the doctor because some students were allegedly in the operating room, the doctors were teaching per their State of Ohio U.C contracts. Therefore those doctors were not liable for any mistakes. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the Theobalds belonged in the Court of Claims, a separate court set up in 1980 to handle suits against the state, usually against public state employees like highway workers, never before used to protect private doctors in their private practices.
The Court of Claims has no juries. Single judges, hired by the state, issue rulings for or against the state. The top award is $250,000, no matter the severity of the damages. Most importantly, the taxpayers foot the bill, not doctors’ malpractice insurers who must pay when suits are filed in county courts of common pleas.
Of course, Keith Theobald never knew to ask if a student would be watching his operation, and if so what the impact might be. But if you think doctors from now on will have to tell patients and get consent to have students in the room, you’d be wrong. The Supreme Court ruled the law doesn’t demand disclosure. No one has to inform patients they could lose their rights to sue the doctors without ever knowing it.
Keith Theobald hasn’t lost hope for a medical miracle. But in the end, he never did get a chance at even the Court of Claims the Ohio Supreme Court said he should access. That’s because the same state attorneys for U.C. who argued that’s the court where the Theobalds belonged, now argued it was too late. The statute of limitations had passed. No recovery, not even $250,000, for Keith Theobald’s lifetime injuries.
