Lawsuit; Man wins $2.8M over broken neck at hospital;

A Franklin County jury has awarded $2.8 million to a West Side man who was paralyzed when a Doctors Hospital employee put him in a restraint hold in the emergency room.

Michael Dillon, 42, sued OhioHealth, the hospital's parent company, in June 2010, one year after the incident. The lawsuit said the employee caused severe injury to Dillon's cervical spine by applying "excessive force to his neck and body."

The eight-member jury reached its unanimous verdict on Thursday after a monthlong trial before Common Pleas Judge Laurel Beatty.

The jurors awarded Dillon more than $2 million for past and future medical costs and care and $547,000 in damages. The damages will be reduced to meet Ohio's $500,000 cap on damages for medical claims, said Dillon's attorney, J.R. Thomas.

No punitive damages were awarded because the jury rejected a claim that Doctors failed to properly train the employee who caused Dillon's injuries, Thomas said.

OhioHealth is likely to appeal the decision, said Mark Hopkins, a spokesman for the hospital group.

"We believe Mr. Dillon's allegations about what our staff did to restrain him in the ER were inaccurate, and therefore the court's award is unfair to our clinical staff," Hopkins said in an email.

"Although we are sympathetic to Mr. Dillon's condition, we believe his injuries were self-inflicted and without any negligence on our part."

The award is "definitely in the top 10" of the largest jury verdicts in medical cases in Franklin County since 1985, said Stephen Chappelear, a Columbus lawyer who closely monitors civil litigation. The largest award in that period was $17.8 million in 2006 for the family of a girl who suffered brain damage as an infant when something went wrong with anesthesia before surgery.

Chappelear said just 4 percent of medical lawsuits that go to trial in Franklin County result in verdicts of $1 million or more for the plaintiffs.

A rescue squad took Dillon to the Doctors emergency room on June 20, 2009, after he stopped taking medication for a psychiatric condition and became disoriented. At some point during admission to the hospital, he was restrained by a patient-care assistant in what Thomas described as "a full nelson" -- a wrestling hold -- and was sedated.

The following day, as the sedation wore off, hospital employees discovered that Dillon could not move his legs and had only limited use of his hands and arms, Thomas said. He was transferred to Riverside Methodist Hospital, where he underwent surgery for a broken neck.

Dillon has regained much of the use of his hands and arms but not his legs. He lives in a nursing center but hopes that the award will allow his home to be made handicapped-accessible, Thomas said.

jfutty@dispatch.com