South Carolina Lawyers Weekly
A doctor making his rounds in 2011 who took a spill after stepping in a puddle by a nurses’ station won a $2.5 million verdict in September, his attorneys reported to Lawyers Weekly this week.
According to William Padget of the Finkel Law Firm in Columbia, Dr. Win Myat, an infectious-disease specialist, was walking through Unit 3 South at Tuomey Hospital in Sumter about 5:30 a.m. July 6, 2011, when he fell.
In his lawsuit, Myat alleged that nursing technicians created the dangerous condition by moving ice and water to patients nearby.
“Through multiple witnesses, Plaintiff built a strong circumstantial case that Defendant’s employees created this particular danger, and was thus liable under principles of premises liability,” Padget wrote in a summary.
Padget said the hospital denied that there was a dangerous condition and that it created a dangerous condition, and asserted that the circumstantial evidence was mere speculation.
According to the plaintiff, Tuomey offered to settle the case for $40,000. Myat, 39 years old at the time, asked the jury for $2.5 million, claiming a fractured left patella that led to a 29 percent lower extremity impairment rating and permanent disability and restrictions.
Padget said the jury took four hours to return a verdict for the full amount requested.
Follow Heath Hamacher on Twitter @SCLWHamacher
SETTLEMENT REPORT – PREMISES LIABILITY
Amount: $2.5 million
Case name: Myat v. Tuomey Hospital
Court: Sumter County Court of Common Pleas
Case No.: 2012-CP-43-2030
Judge: Ferrell Cothran
Date of verdict: Sept. 3, 2015
Attorneys for plaintiff: William Padget and Francis Hinson of the Finkel Law Firm in Columbia
Attorneys for defendant: David Holler of Lee, Erter, Wilson, James, Holler & Smith in Sumter
