Charleston city officials will pay a man $650,000 after paramedics in a city ambulance gave the man a drug that nearly killed him.
The claim settlement is probably the largest paid by the city in nearly a decade, said City Attorney Paul Ellis, who presented the settlement to City Council members for their approval at a meeting Monday night.
Denzil Hager, 69, fell at home in January and fractured his hip, Ellis said. Paramedics intended to give him saline intravenously, but mistakenly gave him lidocaine, a numbing medication that is a controlled substance.
On his way to the hospital, Hager became unresponsive. He had to be intubated and resuscitated, said one of Hager’s attorneys, Ben Salango of the Charleston firm Preston & Salango.
“Our client, Mr. Hager, spent months in a rehabilitation facility, surviving with the use of a feeding tube,” attorney Brett Preston said. “He still has not fully recovered, although he remains hopeful.”
The lidocaine was inadvertently placed where saline bags are usually kept in the ambulance, Ellis said.
Last year, when paramedics realized they were low on lidocaine, they couldn’t get their usual bags of the drug, he said. Those bags are 250 milliliters and have “big, red lettering” on them.
Instead, Ellis said, the city ordered different bags, which have smaller, black lettering and are 500 milliliters — the same size as the saline bags used by city paramedics.
“If you close your eyes, they would feel the same as a saline bag,” said Ellis, who planned to bring a sample of each bag to show City Council members Monday night.
The city will pay $300,000 of the settlement and its insurance carrier will pay the remaining $350,000, Ellis said.
Council members are required to approve settlements that are more than $15,000.
“This is very atypical for the city and an unfortunate accident,” Ellis said. “The first thing [paramedics] did right after this happened was print off big red labels that said lidocaine. They went all through the inventory, adding labels to make sure all of the 500-milliliter bags would have red lettering.
Ellis said he believes the settlement might be the largest for the city since a $1.8 million settlement with the husband of a woman killed by a city police officer who was speeding without emergency lights or siren on MacCorkle Avenue, in Kanawha City.
Lawyers in the case reached the settlement through mediation last week, and Hager’s attorneys commended the city for settling the case outside of a courtroom.
The city “acknowledged its mistake and stepped up to restore [Hager’s] losses without unnecessary litigation,” Preston said. “In doing so, the city undoubtedly saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in defense costs and treated Mr. Hager with dignity and respect.”
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.