On the campaign trail, GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum says he will push to limit payments to victims in medical malpractice lawsuits, which he blames for unnecessarily driving up health-care costs. And over the course of his two decades in politics, he repeatedly spoke in favor of capping such awards.
But Santorum testified in support of his wife when she filed a medical malpractice suit in 1999 that sought $500,000, twice the cap in his 1994 legislative proposal. Karen Santorum claimed that a Fairfax chiropractor had left her with a permanent back injury that probably would result in a lifetime of pain medication and restricted mobility.
This fall, while campaigning in Iowa, Santorum told reporters that he backed some limits but that his wife did not sue for “pain and suffering, which is the area I think we should cap.”
Although the lawsuit did not seek a specific figure for pain and suffering, the former senator testified in the case about the emotional and physical toll on his wife and how that justified a sizable monetary award, transcripts show. The judge in the case also made clear that the majority of the $350,000 the jury awarded the family was largely for unspecific losses and pain and suffering, an amount he concluded was “excessive.”
The lawsuit stemmed from a family tragedy, when in 1996 Karen Santorum gave birth prematurely to the couple’s fourth child, a son who died the same day. Suffering lower-back pain after the delivery, Karen Santorum sought out a Burke chiropractor, David Dolberg, for help.
Dolberg performed a spinal manipulation, which he and other experts testified was a standard, recommended therapy for her symptoms. Karen Santorum said that the treatment caused a herniated disk in her spine, which was surgically removed a week later.
Brewster Rawls, Dolberg’s attorney in the suit, defended his client. “The medical evidence was clear that Mrs. Santorum suffered no serious injury,” Rawls said. “Quite simply, the outcome of this case — even with the trial court reducing the verdict by 50 percent — was entirely unfair to this good doctor.”
The Santorums unsuccessfully sought to seal the records in the lawsuit against Dolberg and the center where he worked, saying her husband’s role as a senator would draw attention to the case and violate his wife’s privacy.
Source: Washington Post