Jury awards $4.2 million to Mon Valley resident in medical malpractice case
A Washington County jury, after hearing testimony over the course of two weeks and deliberating for about five hours, awarded $4,242,573 to the now-grown Mon Valley resident whose diagnosis of kidney failure was missed.
Lacey Povrzenich, who is now 22, of Belle Vernon, Westmoreland County, required a kidney transplant eight years ago.
The jurors determined Dr. Dawn McCracken was 85 percent negligent in the matter and they attributed 15 percent of the negligence to Mon Valley Community Health Services.
According to a complaint filed with Washington County Court, Lacey began seeing McCracken as a 17-month-old. As a child, she experienced repeated urinary tract infections.
McCracken ordered blood work, which, when returned, showed levels indicative of kidney impairment or failure.
The levels would have been abnormal in an adult, but they were, her attorney Douglas Price claimed, “highly abnormal” for a child.
In March 2009, Lacey began seeing a physician’s assistant and had two abnormal blood pressure readings at Mon Valley Community Health Services.
In May 2010 at the same location, she was again found to have abnormally high blood pressure, but there was no medical followup.
Two weeks later, she was flown to Children’s Hospital, Pittsburgh, where she was diagnosed with end-stage renal failure.
She required a kidney transplant and her mother, Janna Pallotta, became her donor.
The verdict included awards for past medical expenses, plus past and future noneconomic loss such as pain and suffering.
Jurors also determined Dr. Jennifer K. Ripepi of Pediatrics LLC; Mon Valley Hospital and Dr. Frank G. Diettinger, who read Povrzenich’s internal scan, were not negligent.
President Judge Katherine B. Emery presided at the trial, which ended late Friday afternoon.