A former U.S. Marine who went to the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in Little Rock for a routine back surgery but was left with permanent brain damage received a $2.49 million judgment last month against the federal government.
Craig Dobbs, 66, of Cotter (Baxter County) and his wife, Eileen Dobbs, were “very happy with the verdict,” said Laurie Higginbotham of National Trial Law of Austin, Texas. After a bench trial, U.S. District Judge Lee P. Rudofsky also awarded Eileen Dobbs $630,000.
Craig Dobbs “and his wife have been really struggling on their own, ever since that injury happened, and he really can’t be left alone,” Higginbotham told Arkansas Business. “It just completely upended their lives.”
The case can be traced to October 2018, when Craig Dobbs, who served in the Marines for 32 years and completed multiple combat tours, arrived at the VA Hospital in Little Rock for spinal surgery to relieve some lower back pain.
During that procedure, neurosurgeon Dr. Diaa Bahgat accidentally tore the dural sheath that protected Dobbs’ spinal cord and enclosed his cerebrospinal fluid, which helps keep the brain afloat, she said. “And that itself is not negligence,” Higginbotham said.
But when that happens, the surgeon should get a watertight seal, “because you don’t want that fluid leaking out endlessly,” she said.
And if the surgeon can’t get a watertight seal, the doctor shouldn’t do anything that would cause more fluid to leak, such as install a drain, Higginbotham said.
“And that’s what [Bahgat] did,” she said. “He didn’t get a good seal on the repair, and then he put in a drain.”
The results were disastrous. As Dobbs was recovering from surgery, about half of his cerebrospinal fluid drained out of his body, resulting in his brain shifting.
“Whatever Dr. Bahgat’s reasoning for placing the drain, it is clear that doing so without confirming a watertight seal of the dural tear was below the standard of care in Arkansas,” Judge Rudofsky wrote in his 107-page decision on Dec. 5.
Dobbs ended up having a brain bleed in three parts of his brain “and basically a stroke,” Higginbotham said.
The medical staff realized something was wrong in the early-morning hours when Dobbs couldn’t speak, she said. “And that’s when they thought something’s going on neurologically here.”
An emergency MRI was ordered. “Well, he didn’t get the MRI for another six or seven hours,” Higginbotham said.
When the MRI was done, it showed the brain bleed and Dobbs returned to surgery. “But the damage was already done by then,” she said. “If you have a brain injury, there’s not a lot you can do to fix it, unfortunately. … And now he’s left with permanent brain injury.”
Dobbs and his wife filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Little Rock in 2020 against the United States of America under the Federal Tort Claims Act. George Wise Jr. of the Brad Hendricks Law Firm of Little Rock also represented the Dobbses.
Bahgat wasn’t named as a defendant because he was an employee of the federal government through the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Federal Tort Claims Act says that doctors who are accused of wrongdoing are not named in those lawsuits; instead the defendant is the United States of America when federal employees are negligent.
After the lawsuit was filed in 2020, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas in Little Rock, which represented the federal government, didn’t attempt to settle the lawsuit, Higginbotham said.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office, “didn’t even want to have a mediation in this case,” she said.
Doctors typically prevail in about 80% to 90% of medical malpractice cases.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas declined to comment.
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