Legal Pearls: Court Rules That Drug was Intervening Cause in Medical Malpractice Death

AUTHOR:

Ann W. Latner, JD

A Maryland appellate court has ruled that a jury validly found a pain specialist physician not liable for the death of a patient she had injected with a contaminated steroid because the medication itself was an intervening and superseding cause of the patient’s fatal fungal meningitis.

The physician was a licensed anesthesiologist and pain management physician.

Was the physician at fault?

(Discussion on next page)