A jury has awarded $2.6 million to the family of a 74-year-old grandmother who died of lung failure after being treated by a Tucson doctor for a severe ulcer in her intestine.
Following a five-day trial in Pima County Superior Court, jurors took less than two hours to unanimously find Dr. Fadi Deeb at fault in the wrongful death of Hansaben Patel, who was under his care for several days at St. Joseph’s Hospital in 2016. The hospital was not faulted.
Patel, who retired with her spouse to Tucson from Chicago in 2001, never recovered after a major bleed in which she vomited so forcefully that blood reached her lungs and caused damage that left her unable to breathe on her own. She spent more than a month on a ventilator, then died surrounded by loved ones after mechanical life support was discontinued.
“While nothing will ever bring Hansaben back, we feel that justice has been done,” her husband Naran Patel said in an email after the decision. “She was a wonderful wife and mother and she will always be in our hearts.”
Jurors heard expert testimony that Deeb, a gastroenterologist, should have taken aggressive action to treat the woman’s ulcer because its location near blood vessels put her at high risk for heavy bleeding. Instead, the doctor ordered further monitoring and said she seemed to him to be improving.
Deeb’s attorney, Tom Slutes of Tucson, could not be reached for comment. He did not immediately return a voicemail or an email sent to his office Friday, Dec. 17.
Tucson attorney James Campbell, who represented the plaintiffs, said the Patels were an active couple who contributed to the community through years of service to the Tucson Rincon Lions Club. Born in India and wed in an arranged marriage, they arrived in America decades ago with very little and built a successful life together.
Campbell said Naran Patel was at his wife’s bedside throughout the ordeal and became depressed after her death. He moved and now lives in Florida.
The jury awarded Naran Patel $1.2 million in damages and another $500,000 to each of the couple’s three grown children.
Deeb’s medical license currently remains in good standing, the Arizona Medical Board’s website shows. Lawyers are required to report wrongful death awards against physicians to the board, Campbell said.
A voice message to the medical board office was not immediately returned.
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