After two years of consideration, 60-year-old Wilbert Johnson filed a suit against the UVA Medical Center on November 7 at the U.S. District Court in Charlottesville. Johnson, a resident of Gordonsville, seeks $350,000 in damages from the medical center after he was discharged without “adequate evaluation,” following a fall that he took in his home on October 30, 2004.
“I’m pretty much a pauper,” Johnson says. Johnson adds that he contacted a half-dozen law firms about his case, to no avail. He is presently acting as his own counsel. “A lot of people weren’t interested in getting involved in a lawsuit against [the UVA Medical Center] because they do such good work,” Johnson said.
In his complaint, Johnson says that the University did not take a pair of previous falls into account, did not evaluate him extensively, and discharged him from the medical center in October of 2004 despite strong objections from his family.
Suffering spells of “weakness and dizziness,” Johnson says he was admitted twice to Martha Jefferson Hospital for falls similar to the one that landed him in the UVA hospital in October. However, he says that UVA discharged him on the same day that he was admitted, and did not take his time at Martha Jefferson into account.
Roughly one month after his discharge, Johnson fell in his home again, and was found by a friend who then helped him to the emergency room at the UVA hospital. Upon his admission, the UVA Medical Center stopped his medicine use. The medicine had caused Johnson’s muscles to atrophy, and caused spasmodic movements similar to those associated with Parkinson’s disease, according to Johnson.
Peter Jump, director of public relations for the UVA Medical Center, would not comment on pending litigation, but offered numbers regarding medical malpractice suits against the UVA Medical Center. Since 2003, 12 suits have been filed, never exceeding more than four per year.
