is that people with really good cases, like this poor fellow who was given a completely unconsented rectal exam over his objection, through the means of a forced restraint and sedation, can't win a jury trial. If you can't win an award after getting digitally raped by hospital staff in the emergency room when you go in for treatment of a head injury, then the doctors terrorists have already won. Bummer.
Here are some of the reported facts:
Persaud ended up being sedated and handcuffed after he flew into a rage when doctors tried to administer a rectal exam. Brian Persaud, 38, was taken to the hospital in May 2003 after being smacked in the forehead by a 40-pound plank that fell off scaffolding being erected at a Manhattan job site. Emergency room workers hoped the rectal exam could determine if there were spinal cord injuries. Doctors claim they weren't even able to administer the "full" rectal exam before Persaud snapped. According to Persaud, when he resisted, staffers held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that." According to doctors, he began flailing about, hitting a doctor in the head and screaming, "Where I came from, you don't put anything in someone's a--." When Persaud woke up he was handcuffed to a bed and had an oxygen tube down his throat and lubricant in his rectum.
Whether or not it is "routine" to get a UFIA as part of treatment for a cut above your eye, I agree 100% with the patient's lawyer: "Routine or not, when you say no, you say no. Once he said no, that he didn't want a rectal exam, everything should have stopped."
There has to be more to this story. The jury must have hated this guy for some reason. Maybe they thought he was a malingerer, or that his claims that he is out of work and afraid of doctors because of the UFIA were perceived as an attempt to cheat the system out of a buck. It makes no sense to me whatsoever, even if the jury found that the doctors were completely correct in their assertion that the finger up the arse was medically appropriate.
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