Surgeon loses second malpractice suit

Bill Gang

Tuesday, June 8, 1999 | 9:54 a.m.

The former chief of neurosurgery at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center has been hit with the second medical malpractice judgment of his career -- this time for more than $400,000.

After a three-week trial a District Court jury determined Monday that Dr. Albert Capanna, along with internist Dr. William Gramlich, were responsible for a 1993 operation on the wrong vertebra in Barbara Cleveland's neck.

On the witness stand last week, Cleveland complained of constant pain that requires daily medication and forced her to give up a job as a waitress although she later found a better paying job working for a mobile home company in Pahrump.

As she testified, she winced occasionally in apparent pain and used a hand to support her head.

While the jury in District Judge Mark Gibbons' courtroom voted to award Cleveland $450,000, it determined she was 10 percent responsible for her condition because she didn't follow doctors' orders to the letter.

That reduces the award to $405,000.

But it was the surgery on the wrong vertebra because of a typographical error in her medical record that was 90 percent to blame, the jury found.

Gramlich made the error on the chart on which Capanna relied for the surgery July 5, 1993, at Sunrise Hospital, the jury was told.

Capanna, a longtime ringside fight doctor for the Nevada State Athletic Commission, has had one prior high-profile malpractice judgment over the death of a child.

In March 1998 Capanna and other medical officials settled a suit with the parents of an infant who in two months underwent 11 surgeries at Sunrise in 1992, only to die four years later. The parents of Erik Dailey -- Elizabeth and Kevin Dailey -- received $7.4 million, $3.5 million of which was paid by Capanna and his insurers.

A third malpractice case is pending in Gibbons' courtroom.

The Cleveland trial could serve as a sounding board for critics of health maintenance organizations. Health Plan of Nevada, Cleveland's insurer, would not approve the doctor she wanted to perform the surgery because he was not on the list of health care providers, her lawyer told jurors. The HMO instead sent her to Capanna.

And now, attorney Thomas Mehesan told jurors, Cleveland has not been able to find a doctor the HMO will approve to do corrective surgery.