In the News
The Legal Intelligencer
August 16, 2001
Death After Visit to Cardiologist Yields $2.9 Million Verdict High-Low Agreement Preceded Deliberations
After deliberating for less than two hours yesterday, a Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury awarded $2.9 million to the wife of a man found dead five months after he visited a cardiologist.
In February 1997, William Speier experienced heart palpitations, chest pressure and indigestion and visited Arnold Meshkov, a cardiologist. According to the plaintiff's attorney, Nadeem A. Bezar of Kolsby Gordon Robin Shore & Bezar, Meshkov evaluated Speier and told him that his palpitations, chest pressure and indigestion were likely the result of his excessive consumption of coffee.
Speier received no further treatment from Meshkov.
In July 1997, Speier was found dead by his wife, Constance, who filed the case on behalf of her husband. Speier had three children at the time of his death.
At a trial overseen by Judge C. Darnell Jones II, Bezar argued that Speier's symptoms were consistent with cardiac problems and that Meshkov was negligent in not performing further tests to determine the source of Speier's symptoms.
"He shouldn't have written off the palpitations to 'excessive caffeine.' Sometimes they can be brought on by life-threatening conditions," Bezar said.
Pinpointing the cause of Speier's death was difficult, Bezar said, because the final autopsy report and death certificate differed.
"[The documents] were unclear on whether or not [the death] was heart-related. We established that Mr. Speier died of a heart arrhythmia and that this would not necessarily show up at autopsy," Bezar said.
Defense attorney Robert Pugh of Kane Pugh Knoell & Driscoll in Norristown argued that the autopsy revealed that Speier's death was not cardiac-related.
Bezar said that it is common for no evidence of a cardiac arrhythmia to appear in an autopsy and that had Meshkov performed a battery of tests during Speier's visit, the condition could have been treated, likely preventing Speier's death.
Pugh countered that the tests were not necessary or the standard of care in cases similar to Speier's.
A defense pathology expert testified that he was 100 percent certain that Speier's heart was normal at autopsy and that the cause of death could not be cardiac-related.
"All along, throughout the course of the case, we believed, and we still believe, that the doctor acted appropriately, and we had strong expert support that was supportive of the doctor's care and supportive of his decision-making process in treating this patient," Pugh said.
The jury disagreed, delivering a unanimous $2.9 million verdict late yesterday afternoon.
However, a high-low agreement reached just before jury deliberations limits the amount the plaintiff actually will receive. Bezar said that the specific monetary amounts were confidential but that the agreement would not significantly reduce his client's award.
According to the terms of the agreement, the jury's decision cannot be appealed by either side.
Pugh said the high-low agreement was in the best interest of Meshkov.
"We recognized all along that the plaintiffs themselves, [Speier's] wife and children, were very sympathetic plaintiffs. He was a young man who died with a young family, and we recognized the risk of taking a case with such strong sympathetic factors to trial. ... We thought it was in the interest to protect the doctor in entering into a high-low," said Pugh.
