Robert Goodson (Senior Counsel-Washington, DC), David Finucane (Of Counsel-Baltimore, MD) and Pernell “Perry” Choren (Associate-Washington, DC) obtained a defense verdict in Montgomery County Circuit Court in Maryland on behalf of a local plastic surgeon/wound care physician. Plaintiffs alleged that our client breached the standard of care when he issued a verbal order that included a STAT repeat blood draw and instructions to the in-home nurses to send the patient to her primary care physician or the hospital based on the repeat lab values after receiving notification of her low hemoglobin value. Bert and Perry successfully argued at trial that even though our client was not the ordering physician for the patient’s weekly CBCs, he did not violate the standard of care when he quickly acted to ensure that the patient received the treatment required for her condition. The patient ultimately refused the STAT blood draw and died five days later. After a six-day trial spanning a week and a half and less than an hour of deliberation, the jury of six returned a unanimous verdict finding that our client did not breach the standard of care. The verdict did not require the jury to consider whether the patient had assumed the risk or been contributorily negligent for refusing the STAT blood draw on the day in question, or whether the in-home nursing company had been a superseding cause of the patient’s death.