Mengelson v. Ingalls Health Ventures

Mengelson v. Ingalls Health Ventures,

No. 1-00-3353 (Ill. App. May 22, 2001)

The Appellate Court of Illinois, First District, ruled against a woman who appealed
a directed verdict on her claim against a health center. She claimed that the
health center negligently failed to hire a skilled and competent phlebotomist
and that the medical assistant who performed the blood draw caused her to contract
reflex sympathetic dystrophy (RDS) in her left arm. One expert testified that
the chances of this happening were one in 6,000,000. The court found that the
woman failed to establish that the medical assistant’s negligence was both the
actual cause of her injuries and that her injury was the foreseeable result
of the medical assistant’s actions.