State Claims Commission Awards Metheny Family $2M

The Arkansas Claims Commission has ordered the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences to pay $2 million to the family of a man whose surgeon operated on the wrong side of his brain.

The claims commission on Tuesday released its order in the case of Cody Metheny, who was 15 years old in 2004 when he had surgery at Arkansas Children’s Hospital to correct a seizure disorder. Doctors operated on the wrong side of Metheny’s brain, causing what Metheny’s parents called “extensive and permanent, irreparable harm,” including deteriorating intelligence, “psychotic delusions” and “continuing seizures.”

More: Click here to read the commission’s order (PDF).

In its ruling, the commission found UAMS “negligent and responsible for the harm” sustained by Cody and his parents, Kenny and Pamela Metheny. Even though the surgery took place at ACH, the commission held UAMS responsible because it employed Metheny’s surgeon, Dr. Badih Adada, and other doctors on the surgery team, and said that UAMS “covered up” the wrong-sided surgery.

Leslie Taylor, vice chancellor for the Office of Communication & Marketing at UAMS, said Wednesday that UAMS was disappointed with the commission’s findings and is considering its legal and procedural options.

“We really feel like the decision, respectfully, … was an erroneous decision,” she said.

Taylor said UAMS and ACH are separate entities, but noted that UAMS has training relationships ACH and eight other hospitals in Arkansas. She said UAMS being held to such a standard of liability could put its physician training programs at risk. 

She also noted that Adada had settled a lawsuit brought by the Methenys admitting no fault. 

“We just felt like we weren’t a part of this,” she said.

Taylor said UAMS could make a motion to reconsider the case at the claims commission, which it has 40 days to file. Or it could appeal to the Legislature’s claims subcommittee, which will review the commission’s order.

Much of the commissions’ findings were derived from various lawsuits surrounding the case, including a 2009 lawsuit against ACH’s insurance carrier, Medical Assurance Co. of Birmingham, Alabama, in which the Methenys won a $20 million judgment. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Ellen Brantley later reduced the amount to $11 million — the amount of its liability coverage for the hospital.

Earlier this year, a Virginia rehabilitation center was finally paid $2.1 million for providing five years of care to Cody Metheny. The Neurological Rehabilitation Living Center of Virginia Beach accused Cody’s parents and malpractice attorneys of routing the proceeds from $13 million worth of judgments into a special needs trust in a “scheme to divorce Cody of assets on which NRLC has a lien and to leave Cody judgment-proof.”

But the Methenys’ bankruptcy attorney said the parents couldn’t pay the bill because the malpractice attorneys set the trust up in a way that kept them from spending it.