Traumatic Brain Injury & Severe Chronic Pain
On February 6, 2024, after three weeks of trial in Supreme Court, New York County before Justice James G. Clynes, Michael Flomenhaft obtained a $1.5 million dollar settlement of a medical malpractice case. This was a retrial of a case that in 2019 had resulted in a defense verdict, which was set aside after successful post-trial motion practice by The Flomenhaft Law Firm, PLLC and upheld on appeal.
The case concerned a series of spinal surgeries which involved the insertion of unfused fee standing bone grafts into low back intervertebral spaces. This was purported by the defendant neurosurgeon as a strategy to arrest longstanding incapacitating lumbar spine pain stemming from a motor-vehicle collision almost eight years before. The neurosurgeon had advocated his surgical procedure as “motion preserving stabilization” which he also described as “Posterior Lumbar Interbody Stabilization” as superior to a spinal fusion surgery as preserving spinal mobility and averting adjacent level vertebral stress. Instead, this novel procedure resulted in extreme “subsidence”, representing erosion of two lumbar vertebrae and ultimately necessitating an extensive fusion surgery to halt further vertebral deterioration. The physician had no insurance just a very limited hospital indemnity. As this indemnity minimally exceeded the settlement amount, The Flomenhaft Law Firm, PLLC was proud to obtain even this justice for the injured client.