Baltimore Washington Hospital Lawsuit Dismissed

A lawsuit by former CBS “Early Show” personality Mark McEwen against a Maryland doctor and Baltimore Washington Hospital has been dismissed on summary judgment. The Maryland medical malpractice lawsuit alleged that Baltimore Washington Medical Center should have recognized that McEwen was suffering from stroke-like symptoms and treated him with anti-coagulates. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz granted summary judgment for the doctors, finding that there was not sufficient evidence that anti-coagulates would not have prevented McEwen’s stroke.

Interestingly, the doctor at Baltimore Washington Medical Center (formerly North Arundel Hospital) admitted in his deposition that he spent time looking up McEwen on the Internet during his stint in the emergency room. The doctor told McEwen he had the stomach flu and advised him not to fly for two days. McEwen followed the doctor’s orders, then traveled home to Florida and suffered a stroke in mid-air.

It is relatively rare to lose a medical malpractice case in Maryland on summary judgment because usually the doctor’s opinion are set out before the case is filed. Honestly, and I’m just going off the press coverage, I doubt there was much of a malpractice case here although the temporal relationship between the ER visit and the stroke is compelling.