Judith Livingston: A doctor almost killed her, a jury gave her $4M

http://nypost.com/2013/10/09/a-doctor-almost-killed-her-a-jury-gave-her-4m/

NYPost - By Josh Saul and Julia Marsh

October 9, 2013 | 11:34pm 

Shoshana Goldhaber was awarded $4 million after she almost died on the operating table.

Photo: Matthew McDermott

She’s used to plenty of slicing and dicing as a producer for TV chefs Mario Batali and Giada De Laurentiis — but a former Food Network employee expected far more precision when she went under the knife in a Manhattan hospital.

And a Brooklyn jury agreed — to the tune of $4 million.

Shoshana Goldhaber, 41, was undergoing surgery for an ovarian cyst in 2007 when Dr. Melanie Marin mistakenly pierced her aorta, court papers state.

“I almost bled to death on the operating table,” Goldhaber told The Post. “All I could think about was my newborn baby, who would be motherless because of Dr. Marin’s negligence.”

Goldhaber sued and a Brooklyn Supreme Court jury found in her favor on Tuesday, awarding her the big payout for a combination of past and future pain and suffering for her and her husband.

Goldhaber’s attorney Judith Livingston described the almost fatal accident.

“She inserted the blade far too forcefully and at the wrong angle and lost control and she pierced the aorta in the front and went out the back,” Livingston said of the surgery at New York Presbyterian Hospital. “The blade only stopped when she hit the spine. It was like an ice pick going through your main blood vessel.”

Goldhaber had to be saved by a vascular surgery team that rushed to her rescue.

“I woke up and I had no idea what happened,” said Goldhaber. “I was terrified … All the trust I had in doctors was lost that day.”

Because the surgery team had to cut Goldhaber open immediately in order to save her life, the mother-of-two suffered an ugly scar across her body.

“It’s a very ragged scar because there wasn’t time to do it cosmetically,” Livingston said. “It’s a very disfiguring and unsightly scar.”

Goldhaber said she worked as an assistant producer on “Ciao America” with Mario Batali and as an assistant producer on “Everyday Italian with Giada DeLaurentiis.”

The Brooklyn jury answered, “Yes,” when asked, “Did defendant Dr. Melanie Marin depart from good and accepted medical practice in the manner in which she performed the laparoscopy [surgery]?”

An attorney for Dr. Marin did not respond to a request for comment.