STARKVILLE — An Oktibbeha County Circuit Court jury found an OCH Regional Medical Center-affiliated doctor met the required standard of care in the 2016 deaths of two of his patients.
The jury deliberated for about an hour Friday before delivering the verdict on an 11-1 vote, following a five-day civil trial for medical negligence against Dr. Thomas Pearson in the deaths of Dr. Paula Shoemake Patterson and Aubrey Patterson. The plaintiffs were asking for $3.2 million in damages.
Paula Patterson was a 40-year-old surgeon who worked at OCH and was pregnant with her second child. According to her medical records from Starkville Clinic for Women, she had a seemingly normal pregnancy until she went into labor on May 31.
She was admitted to OCH around 4 p.m., according to hospital records. By the time she arrived, she was experiencing contractions and was three centimeters dilated.
About 8 p.m., Pearson ordered pitocin, a drug known to speed up labor, to be administered to her. By 1:55 a.m. on June 1, Paula Patterson had passed away after suffering a seizure that left her unable to breathe.
Her baby, Aubrey Patterson, was then delivered via c-section. She died only a few days later at a hospital in Jackson.
The plaintiff, Jason Earl Patterson, claimed his wife’s passing was due to negligent care on the part of Pearson, as Paula could have received a c-section earlier to prevent the loss of her life and their child’s life.
However, a c-section could only have been administered if Paula was in active labor. Witnesses for the defense, including Pearson, claimed labor wasn’t considered “active” until dilation reached six centimeters and contractions were regular. The defense also cited a 2014 consensus statement from the American College of Osteopathic Obstetrics and Gynecologists to back up that position.
In closing arguments Friday, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, George Schmidt, said Pearson did not meet the minimum standard of care, based on the three to four centimeter definition of active labor in the 24th edition of “Williams Obstetrics” and the testimony of expert witness Dr. Michael Cardwell.
“If it’s six centimeters, they can say she wasn’t in labor, and they shouldn’t have done a c-section,” Schmidt said. “But if they use the standard that’s in this textbook, then that’s a problem.”
Pearson’s attorney, David Upchurch, argued the Williams textbook actually agrees with his client’s interpretation.
“We looked actually at the Williams Obstetrics textbook, 24th edition … this morning, and the very consensus opinions that we looked at, six centimeters, (for) active labor were in the textbook,” Upchurch said. “The most striking statement in there was this, ‘The newly proposed criteria for the first stage of labor are already in use in contemporary practice.’”
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