Indiana Accident News

Man Challenges Indiana’s Medical Malpractice Award Cap

For decades, Indiana has had a $1.25 million cap on medical malpractice awards. Now, however, the widower of a medical malpractice victim is challenging the law in order to receive the full amount awarded to him last month during his medical malpractice trail -- $8.5 million from Community Hospital of Indianapolis.

At the beginning of September, a Marion County jury found the Indiana hospital negligent in their treatment of Debbie Plank, wife of Timothy Plank. In 2001, Debbie went to the Community Hospital emergency room three times complaining of severe abdominal pain. An x-ray was taken that showed that she had a bowel obstruction in her lower intestine - a medical emergency that requires immediate surgery. However a few miscommunications took place and her x-ray was misplaced. When her medical issues was finally discovered, part of her intestine had died and she passed away the next day despite being placed on life support.

Timothy Plank says that his motivation for receiving the full amount of the medical malpractice reward has nothing to do with money, and in fact that most of the money would be donated to the Deborah L Plank Memorial Scholarship, administered by the Hancock County Indiana Community Foundation. The scholarship fund helps high school students pay for college. Originally, Plank said that he filed a medical malpractice suit only after the hospital seemed unaware of their medical error after the death of his wife and after he realized that he might help others in similar situations.

The widower told reporters, "I am doing this to help others in this situation, not for the money."

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