Lawsuit over death of Ledyard teen resolved before trial
The family of a 13-year-old Ledyard boy who died from a MRSA infection in March 2011 after being misdiagnosed with a sore throat at the Pequot Health Center settled a wrongful death/medical malpractice suit as the case was headed to trial this week in New London Superior Court.
David Hobart Isbell, father of David Hart Isbell and administrator of his estate, had sued Alexander J. Ejzak, a physician's assistant, the Emergency Medicine Physicians of New London County, and Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, which operates the Pequot Health Center, a clinic in Groton. L+M later was dismissed from the lawsuit.
A jury was selected and testimony scheduled to begin Wednesday before Judge Shari Ann Murphy, but attorneys reached a settlement on Monday.
Isbell was represented by attorney Sean McElligott of the Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder law firm, who said by phone Wednesday that both he and the family are bound by a confidentiality agreement that prevents them from speaking publicly about the details of the settlement. McElligott confirmed that the lawsuit, which has been pending since 2013, would be withdrawn.
Attorney Frederick Trotta of the Halloran Sage law firm, who represented Ejzak and the Emergency Medical Physicians group, also cited the confidentiality agreement when reached by phone Wednesday.
According to the court record, David Isbell's mother, Mary Martin Isbell, brought him to the Pequot Health Center on March 9, 2011, for severe throat pain, difficulty swallowing and a fever that was not responding to Tylenol. He was seen by a nurse and Ejzak, who diagnosed the middle school student with acute pharyngitis — which is a sore throat — and sent him home with a prescription for cough medicine with codeine and instructions to call his doctor if symptoms worsened. The supervising physician, Dr. Robert Gianfrocco, signed off on the teen's medical record but did not examine him.
David's mother called the clinic later that afternoon and told a nurse he was sleepy, restless, having trouble breathing and incoherent. The nurse told the mother that the physician's assistant indicated those conditions were expected and to return to the clinic the next morning if he didn't improve.
His condition worsened and he was taken by ambulance to Lawrence + Memorial, and then Yale-New Haven Hospital. He died on March 11 from methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, sepsis, septic shock, respiratory failure, cardiovascular collapse and cardiopulmonary arrest, according to the court record.
The lawsuit alleged David Isbell's treatment at the clinic fell below the standard of care because the teen was not evaluated by a physician, did not receive a chest X-ray, was not admitted to the hospital and was discharged without staff knowing whether he had a toxic condition.
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