Settlement Reached Providing Closure for Family

Partners Jim Bordas and Geoff Brown recently concluded, by way of a multi-million dollar settlement, the case that Tom and Michele McFadden brought against Wheeling physician Dr. Robert Cross.  The case the McFadden’s brought on behalf of their deceased 18-year-old son, who was a freshman at West Liberty University, began when Dr. Cross agreed to undertake an elective splenectomy to treat David’s non-life threatening blood disorder.

David, his mother, father, brother and sisters understood that the procedure that Dr. Cross would be performing would be a general splenectomy. The original consent form that was signed by David indicated that the surgery would simply be a splenectomy.  Instead, the doctor, against the wishes of his 18-year-old patient and his parents, took it upon himself to perform the procedure laparoscopically. This decision by the doctor flew in the face of the directions given to him by both his patient and the patient’s parents not to perform a laparoscopic procedure inasmuch as Dr. Cross had never before performed a laparoscopic splenectomy. Instead, during the course of the doctor’s first laparoscopic splenectomy, which the doctor did without any training, without ever having performed the surgery, without ever having assisted in performing the surgery and only gaining knowledge as to how to do the surgery by reading a couple of articles and watching YouTube, encountered the problems one might expect of a physician unskilled and untrained in such a procedure.

During the procedure, Dr. Cross had difficulty in breaking up and removing David’s spleen and decided to use a dangerous instrument called a morcellator, which he had never used before, nor had any training on its use.  Being unable to achieve success with the morcellator, he passed the morcellator on to a surgical technician with two years of training and no experience using the morcellator herself.  Within a very short period of time, the technician using the morcellator punctured David’s aorta, causing significant bleeding and death.

Interestingly and incredibly, the hospital consent form that David signed originally had the word “splenectomy” as to the procedure that was to be done, but after David was taken into the operating room, Dr. Cross added the words “laparoscopic open if needed.”

This case has been widely discussed in the Wheeling area as David was a popular student and athlete at Wheeling Central Catholic High School and as a freshman at West Liberty University had already gained many friends.  His mother and father have lived in the Wheeling area for many years, and David’s father, Tom, is a licensed physical therapist.