An extreme case but the legal system is really preying on any...

An extreme case but the legal system is really preying on any profession that doesn't use all the tools avaliable to professionals to diagnose and treat patients or prevent health deteriotion or even OH&S due to Union pressure

All this bodes well for clear instructions by specialists to ensure the use of QFT and other diagnostics if only as a precaution to prevent claim.

Cash flow is coming!!



Damages increased for misdiagnosis
By Lauren Ahwan
April 20, 2005
AN Adelaide woman who became a paraplegic after a cyst on her spine was wrongly diagnosed has had her damages increased to more than $3.25 million.

The South Australian Supreme Court today increased the amount of damages awarded to Vivien Kaye Waller by $50,000, finding the original amount awarded for future economic loss was unreasonably low.

The court dismissed an appeal by Flinders Medical Centre (FMC) and its former neurologist Richard Burns, who had argued the initial payment was excessive.

Mrs Waller, 51, will now receive $3,252,000.

After complaining of back pain, Mrs Waller was misdiagnosed in 1975 as suffering from multiple sclerosis (MS) and became wheelchair bound in the late 1990s.









An MRI scan in 1997 finally located a rare form of cyst growing on Mrs Waller's spine, which was subsequently removed.

Chief Justice John Doyle today the cyst would have been discovered much earlier if more extensive tests had been carried out.

"There was sufficient uncertainty about the cause of Mrs Waller's symptoms to call for further investigations as a matter of proper neurological practice," Chief Justice Doyle said.

"Had those investigations been carried out the presence of a cyst would have been disclosed (and) the cyst could, and would, have been removed, and Mrs Waller's condition thereafter would have been about the same as it was during her period of period of remission between 1982 and 1986."

Chief Justice Doyle said the initial payment awarded to Mrs Waller was slightly conservative and at the "lower end of the range" that he would have determined.

The court doubled the amount initially awarded for future income loss to $100,000, but noted that if Mrs Waller had been able to work full-time until the age of 65, she could have earned $273,000.

Dr Burns retired from FMC in 2001