Baltimore City Circuit Court: Plaintiff wins $22K in suit against

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Oct 16, 2008 by Brendan Kearney

When Donald Sturgill learned from his attorney in June 2003 that he had been offered just $15,000 to settle his medical malpractice claim against the University of Maryland Medical System Corp., he rejected the payout and eventually sued that lawyer for legal malpractice.

More than five years later, a Baltimore jury has decided his medical claim was worth less than half the hospital's offer.

Even so, the jury found Sturgill's lawyer was negligent in accepting the settlement on his behalf. It held the lawyer responsible for $6,887.43 in medical damages, and added another $15,000 in non-economic damages.

Sturgill had sought $1.25 million in his legal malpractice suit in Baltimore City Circuit Court against his former lawyer Robert E. Joyce and Joyce's former employer, The Suder Law Firm.

Because of the posture of the case, Sturgill had to establish that both his lawyer and his doctors had fallen short of the standard of care.

However, Sturgill failed to convince the jury that Sturgill's heart and nervous system ailments resulted from his treatment at R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center after a June 3, 2000, boating accident.

Neither Sturgill's attorney, Richard S. Lopatto III of Washington; Dennis J. Quinn, who represented the defendant law firm; nor R. Scott Krause of Eccleston & Wolf PC, which represented the defendant attorney Robert E. Joyce, returned calls for comment Wednesday.

Sturgill was fishing with a co-worker on the Susquehanna River when a torrent from a nearby dam release capsized their boat. A passing sailboat lifted Sturgill to safety, and a helicopter flew him to the emergency room in downtown Baltimore.

While multiple outside doctors who reviewed his case believe Sturgill was stable and properly released five hours after his arrival, Sturgill contended his subsequent renal failure, cardiomyopathy, and peripheral neuropathy, among other maladies, was the hospital's fault.

He shopped his case to a few attorneys before it crossed the desk of Joyce, then at The Suder Law Firm and now a solo practitioner in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Riverside.

A doctor the firm regularly used to evaluate prospective medical malpractice claims told Joyce Sturgill's claim was unsupportable, but Joyce, at Sturgill's urging, began negotiating with the hospital. Told the $15,000 offer was "firm," he accepted it -- without first obtaining Sturgill's consent.

At trial before Judge John M. Glynn, Sturgill alleged Joyce told him about the offer but not that he had accepted it in writing or that the hospital was still operating under the assumption that the claim had been settled, which led to the hospital's lawsuit against Sturgill for breaching the settlement.

Sturgill later hired Jay D. Miller of Miller, Murtha & Psoras LLC to handle his medical malpractice, then legal malpractice, claim, but ended up suing, and settling with, that firm over the lapsing of his medical claim.

**************************CORRECTION********************************

On Thursday, in "Plaintiff wins $22K in suit against lawyer," the litigants' trial attorneys were incorrectly identified. John Lopatto III represented the plaintiff in his suit against his former lawyer. Dennis J. Quinn represented the defendant lawyer. R. Scott Krause represented the defendant law firm.

The Daily Record regrets the error.