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A federal judge has rejected a jury’s verdict for the government and awarded the wife of a
Fort Stewart officer damages totaling $1.7 million in a medical malpractice case. An advisory
jury of two men and four women in Savannah found in favor of the government in February and
against the suit by Mary Ann Neumann. But, U.S. District Judge Anthony A. Alaimo ruled in a
15-page order filed in Brunswick last week he was rejecting the jury’s verdict. He found that
doctors and nurses at Winn Army Community Hospital at Fort Stewart violated the required
standard of care in Mrs. Neumann’s case and those violations caused her injuries. He ordered
the government to pay Mrs. Neumann, wife of Capt. James Neumann stationed at Fort Stewart,
damages totaling$1,674,495, including $850,000 in lost future earnings and $817,600 in pain and
suffering.
Mrs. Neumann, 34, sued the federal government for medical malpractice
stemming from administering of the antibiotic gentamicin after being hospitalized at Winn
hospital at Fort Stewart on Oct. 6, 1987. She asked for $5 million in damages in her suit,
filed in September by attorneys Don Keenan, Jeffrey Lasky and Charles R. Ashman. Mrs. Neumann
contended the Army medical personnel and Dr. Joseph K. Lawrence, an Army doctor in the
obstetrics and gynecology section, had violated the standard of care required of physicians in
her case. She contended Army physicians had improperly administered the drug and failed to
monitor its side effects. As a result she suffered dizziness and permanent disequilibrium.
She now suffers headaches, has trouble focusing and walks with what one witness said in
February was the demeanor of one who is intoxicated. She was unable to pursue her career as a
certified public accountant or pursue the active lifestyle she enjoyed before the injury.
Alaimo said the medical staff – U.S. Army employees – were negligent and guilty of
medical malpractice in their treatment of Mrs. Neumann when they refused to receive and review
records of a prior hospitalization for injuries suffered in an auto accident in Stillwood,
Okla. The judge also found negligence by the hospital staff for failing to monitor Mrs.
Neumann, for breaching the standard of care for physicians by failing to properly monitor and
improperly administering the drug.
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