Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

A for­mer gam­ing ma­chine tech­ni­cian, Vern Khan, has lost his neg­li­gence law­suit against the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA).

In his law­suit, Khan claimed he lost the use of his arm af­ter re­ceiv­ing treat­ment at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex in Mt Hope for an in­jury he sus­tained in a se­ri­ous car ac­ci­dent over a decade ago. 

High Court Judge Joan Charles dis­missed Khan’s case against NCRHA.

Jus­tice Charles ruled that Khan had failed to prove the hos­pi­tal and its staff were re­spon­si­ble for his last­ing dis­abil­i­ty based on their treat­ment of his ini­tial in­jury from the ac­ci­dent. 

“I hold that the claimant has failed to es­tab­lish on a bal­ance of prob­a­bil­i­ty that the de­fen­dant’s med­ical staff was neg­li­gent,” Jus­tice Charles said last week when the mat­ter came up for hear­ing.

“The treat­ment giv­en to the claimant met the stan­dard of the ‘or­di­nary skilled man ex­er­cis­ing and pro­fess­ing to have that spe­cial skill,’” she added. 

Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence in the case, Khan was ad­mit­ted to the hos­pi­tal af­ter be­ing in­jured in an ac­ci­dent on April 19, 2011.  He was di­ag­nosed with a frac­ture to his right arm and un­der­went surgery the fol­low­ing month. 

Af­ter be­ing dis­charged, Khan re­turned for a clin­ic ap­point­ment and was told the in­jury was healed, and the back slab sta­bil­is­ing his arm could be re­moved. 

Khan said when he re­turned to the hos­pi­tal months lat­er, an X-ray was per­formed and re­vealed a fur­ther in­jury, which re­quired surgery. 

He al­leged the hos­pi­tal ini­tial­ly set a date for the surgery, but it had to be post­poned and was nev­er resched­uled. Khan said he lost use of the arm based on the fail­ure of the hos­pi­tal and its staff to man­age his in­jury. 

In the law­suit, Khan claimed $120,000 to cov­er the cost of cor­rec­tive surgery at a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion and $416,000 for loss of earn­ings as he claimed he can no longer work as a re­sult of the in­jury. 

The NCRHA de­nied any wrong­do­ing as it re­ject­ed Khan’s claims over the treat­ment he re­ceived

The health au­thor­i­ty said Khan was sched­uled to un­der­go the sec­ond surgery in Oc­to­ber 2012, but did not show up. 

In de­cid­ing the case, Jus­tice Charles re­ject­ed the ev­i­dence of Khan’s med­ical ex­pert, which she ruled was rid­dled with in­con­sis­ten­cies. She al­so up­held the NCRHA’s claim that the de­lay in per­form­ing the sec­ond surgery was a re­sult of Khan’s un­con­trolled al­co­hol and nico­tine ad­dic­tion and cor­re­spond­ing men­tal health is­sues. 

“I al­so ac­cept­ed, on the ev­i­dence that the claimant had been ad­vised of the im­por­tance of re-ap­ply­ing the back slab and he flout­ed the ad­vice by re­fus­ing to have it re-ap­plied, there­by con­tribut­ing to the wors­en­ing of his con­di­tion,” she said. 

“I al­so ac­cept that ef­forts had been made to sched­ule the cor­rec­tive surgery, but due to a com­bi­na­tion of is­sues, in­clud­ing the claimant’s own lack of ef­fort and lim­it­ed re­sources, there was a de­lay, but this de­lay does not amount to neg­li­gence on the part of the de­fen­dant,” she added. 

As part of her judg­ment, Jus­tice Charles or­dered Khan to pay the NCRHA $14,000 in le­gal costs for de­fend­ing the law­suit. 

Khan was rep­re­sent­ed by Pavi­t­ra Ramharack and Bran­don Sir­ju.

The NCRHA was rep­re­sent­ed by Col­in Blaize and Farai Hove-Ma­sai­sai.