Family asks state court to reject UTMC motion

9/14/2013

Attorneys for the woman whose brother’s kidney was accidentally thrown away before it could be implanted into her during a surgery last year at the University of Toledo Medical Center asked a state court Friday to disregard the hospital’s motion to dismiss their lawsuit.

Sarah A. Fudacz, who was 24 at the time of the botched Aug. 10, 2012, kidney transplant surgery, was supposed to have been given a kidney taken from her younger brother, Paul Fudacz, Jr., but the organ was mistakenly thrown away by a nurse after it was removed.

Ms. Fudacz, Mr. Fudacz, their parents, and their four siblings filed a lawsuit July 29 against UTMC in the Court of Claims in Columbus.

The medical center, the former Medical College of Ohio, filed an answer to the Fudacz family lawsuit, in which it acknowledged the organ was discarded but denies some of the Fudacz claims. The document ends with a request to dismiss the Fudacz complaint in its entirety at the plaintiffs’ cost.

UTMC also filed a motion to dismiss two specific parts of the Fudacz complaint: “parental loss of consortium” and “sibling loss of consortium.”

In their response to the UTMC motion, the Fudacz lawyers said “UTMC admits that it threw the kidney away but, shockingly, denies that doing so was negligent.”

The Fudacz response also stated: “heaping insult upon injury, UTMC moved to dismiss the loss of consortium claims brought by the Fudacz family. Relying on stale case law and errant interpretations, UTMC’s motion to dismiss … does little other than underscore why candidates for major medical procedures should avoid state-run hospitals (and UTMC, in particular) at all costs.”