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Marasco & Nesselbush Represents Patients Harmed by Medical Negligence in Woonsocket
A missed stroke, an untreated infection, a surgical error, or an abnormal test result that goes unanswered can leave a patient with injuries that proper medical care might have prevented.
Medical malpractice is not established simply because treatment failed or a patient experienced a known complication.
A claim generally requires evidence that a healthcare provider failed to meet the applicable professional standard of care and that the failure caused additional harm.
At Marasco & Nesselbush, our Woonsocket medical malpractice lawyers represent patients and families dealing with serious consequences of negligent medical treatment, including permanent disabilities, substantial medical expenses, and wrongful death.
Founded in 1999, our firm has recovered more than $500 million across its practice areas and brings more than 350 years of combined legal experience to the cases it handles.
Our attorneys have obtained substantial medical malpractice verdicts and settlements involving surgical negligence, delayed treatment, anesthesia errors, and other preventable injuries.
Patients throughout northern Rhode Island can reach our team through our Woonsocket office at 603 Park Avenue.
Contact Marasco & Nesselbush for a free consultation about suspected medical malpractice, or use the chat feature on this page.
We handle qualifying cases on a contingency fee basis, meaning no attorney fee is owed unless compensation is recovered.
Why Choose Marasco & Nesselbush for a Medical Malpractice Claim in Woonsocket?
Medical negligence cases often require independent review of complex records, testimony from qualified medical experts, and an explanation of how different treatment would probably have changed the patient’s outcome.
Marasco & Nesselbush has extensive experience representing patients who suffered serious injuries because of medical negligence, including cases involving permanent disability, delayed treatment, and wrongful death.
Our law firm has a proven track record of obtaining substantial medical malpractice verdicts and settlements, including cases requiring expert testimony and complex medical evidence.
Our trial lawyers have experience presenting these cases to juries when disputes cannot be resolved through settlement negotiations.
Our documented experience includes the following results and resources:
- $9 million medical negligence recovery: Our firm obtained $9 million for a client who suffered life-altering complications arising from negligence during and after a standard medical procedure.
- $8.49 million surgical negligence recovery: Our attorneys secured $8.49 million for a patient who underwent an avoidable amputation following negligence during knee replacement surgery.
- $7.27 million jury verdict involving delayed stroke treatment: Attorneys Jane Duket and Mark Grimm obtained a $7.27 million Massachusetts verdict for a patient who suffered lasting harm when a stroke was not treated in time.
- $2.05 million anesthesia-related recovery: Our firm’s malpractice results include a $2.05 million recovery for the family of a man who died following negligent administration of anesthesia.
- Experience with serious long-term losses: Our attorneys evaluate medical treatment, permanent impairments, future care needs, and lost earning capacity, working with appropriate medical and other specialists when a case requires their expertise.
- Established Rhode Island representation: Our Woonsocket office gives Rhode Island residents access to experienced medical malpractice attorneys, with additional resources available through our Providence office and client assistance offered in English and Spanish.
These recoveries involved different patients and legal circumstances, and the Massachusetts stroke verdict was not a Rhode Island case.
Each new claim must be evaluated based on its medical evidence, causation, and damages.
What Is Medical Malpractice Under Rhode Island Law?
Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor, nurse, or other medical provider fails to meet the accepted standard of care and that failure causes injury.
The standard generally reflects the treatment a reasonably competent medical practitioner would provide under comparable circumstances, considering the procedure and resources available.
In Sheeley v. Memorial Hospital, the Rhode Island Supreme Court adopted a national approach to the medical standard of care rather than judging physicians solely against practices in a similar local medical community.
The applicable standard depends on the type of medical care involved and the circumstances under which it was provided.
That assessment must account for what the provider reasonably knew at the time, rather than relying only on information discovered after the patient’s condition worsened.
A treatment decision that later proves unsuccessful is not necessarily negligent.
Likewise, a diagnosed illness does not rule out a malpractice claim if inappropriate care caused a separate injury or made the underlying condition worse.
Does a Known Surgical Complication Mean Malpractice Occurred?
Bleeding, infection, and injury to nearby structures are recognized risks of some procedures, even when clinicians exercise appropriate care.
An injury may nevertheless support a malpractice claim if it resulted from an unreasonable technique, preventable error, or failure to recognize and address a developing complication.
For example, an internal injury during surgery may occur without negligence, but delayed recognition and treatment of that injury could cause additional avoidable harm.
Medical experts may need to distinguish the inherent risks of treatment from a preventable departure from accepted care.
Can a Lack of Informed Consent Support a Claim?
A patient’s signature on a consent form does not excuse negligent care.
A separate issue may arise when a physician fails to explain material risks or reasonable treatment alternatives before obtaining consent.
Rhode Island decisions, including Flanagan v. Wesselhoeft, recognize informed consent as a duty distinct from performing treatment competently.
The information disclosed, the patient’s decision, and the injury that occurred must be examined before determining whether an informed-consent claim is supported.
Injured and not sure what your case is worth? Find out for free.
Types of Medical Malpractice Cases Our Attorneys Handle
Medical negligence can occur before a diagnosis is made, during a procedure, or after the patient has been discharged.
The following problems may warrant an investigation when a departure from appropriate care causes additional injury:
- Failure to diagnose or delayed diagnosis: Diagnostic errors may occur when a medical professional misinterprets imaging, overlooks symptoms, fails to consider a patient’s history, or does not act on abnormal test results. Delayed diagnoses involving strokes, infections, heart attacks, and other serious conditions may reduce treatment options or cause preventable injuries.
- Cancer misdiagnosis: Delayed diagnosis of lung cancer, colon cancer, cervical cancer, or another malignancy may occur when suspicious symptoms, screening results, or abnormalities in a patient’s history are not properly investigated. A claim requires evidence that the delay departed from the standard of care and caused additional harm, such as disease progression or the need for more extensive treatment.
- Surgical negligence: Operating on the wrong limb, leaving surgical instruments inside a patient, damaging nerves or organs through negligent technique, or failing to recognize postoperative complications can cause permanent injuries. Such medical errors may require corrective surgery, extended hospitalization, and rehabilitation.
- Anesthesia errors: Improper medication administration, inadequate airway management, and failures to monitor or respond to dangerously low oxygen levels can cause brain damage, other neurological injuries, or death. An adverse outcome requires further investigation to determine whether negligent anesthesia care caused the harm.
- Emergency room negligence: Delayed triage, inadequate diagnostic testing, or premature discharge can leave serious conditions untreated. Patients presenting with head injuries, stroke symptoms, chest pain, or signs of severe infection may face serious risks when urgent symptoms are not evaluated appropriately.
- Medication errors: Prescribing or administering the wrong medication, giving an incorrect dose, or failing to consider documented allergies and drug interactions can cause preventable harm. Responsibility depends on whether the prescribing clinician, pharmacist, nurse, or other medical professional failed to meet the applicable standard of care.
- Obstetric and birth-related negligence: Failures to respond to maternal complications or signs of fetal distress may injure the parent or child; not every difficult delivery or birth injury is attributable to negligence.
- Inadequate monitoring and communication: A patient’s condition may deteriorate when medical staff fail to recognize significant symptoms, communicate abnormal test results, or respond appropriately to changes in vital signs. Negligent discharge planning or inadequate follow-up care may also contribute to preventable complications.
Our related practice pages address medical misdiagnosis, cancer misdiagnosis, surgical negligence, anesthesia errors, and birth injuries in greater detail.
A diagnosis being late, a medication causing side effects, or a patient needing another operation does not alone establish malpractice.
The investigation must identify an unreasonable treatment decision or omission and the additional injury it caused.
Who Can Be Held Responsible for Medical Negligence?
A patient may receive treatment from several medical professionals and medical facilities, particularly when care involves an emergency transfer, surgery, rehabilitation, or specialist consultation.
For example, a Woonsocket patient may receive initial treatment locally before being transferred to Rhode Island Hospital in Providence for specialized care.
When several providers are involved, determining liability requires examining what each professional knew, what care they provided, and whether their actions contributed to the patient’s injuries.
A hospital, medical practice, or individual clinician may be legally responsible for negligent conduct, but involvement in the patient’s treatment does not automatically establish liability.
Potentially responsible parties may include:
- Doctors and surgeons: For negligent diagnosis, treatment decisions, operative care, or follow-up.
- Nurses and other clinical professionals: For failures within their professional duties involving monitoring, medications, or communication.
- Hospitals and medical practices: For the negligence of personnel for whom they are legally responsible or their own failures in staffing, supervision, policies, or patient-safety systems.
- Imaging providers and laboratories: For errors in performing, interpreting, or communicating testing results, subject to the duties and professional standards involved.
- Pharmacies and pharmacists: For qualifying dispensing or other medication-related errors within their professional responsibilities.
A hospital is not automatically liable for every independent physician who provides treatment in its facilities.
Employment, agency relationships, the hospital’s own conduct, and what was represented to the patient may affect whether the institution can be held responsible.
What Must Be Proven in a Rhode Island Medical Malpractice Lawsuit?
Rhode Island medical malpractice claims generally require proof of four elements: duty of care, breach of the professional standard, causation, and damages.
To prove liability in a Rhode Island medical malpractice lawsuit, the evidence generally must establish:
- Duty of care: The defendant owed the patient a professional duty. For physicians, this may involve establishing that a doctor-patient relationship existed when the treatment was provided. Hospitals, nurses, and other health care professionals may also owe duties arising from their roles in the patient’s care.
- Breach of duty: The medical professional violated the accepted standard of care through an unreasonable decision, a diagnostic error, or a failure to act when a reasonably competent practitioner would have done so.
- Causation: The negligent conduct caused additional harm. Medical records, specialist opinions, and the patient’s treatment history may help establish when the injury occurred and distinguish negligence-related harm from the original condition or an unavoidable complication.
- Damages: The injury resulted in recoverable losses, including additional treatment expenses, lost wages, disability, pain and suffering, or future medical expenses attributable to the negligence.
Why Qualified Medical Experts Matter
Medical malpractice cases frequently involve judgments that cannot be evaluated from the records alone without specialist knowledge.
Under R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-19-41, a witness offering expert testimony about alleged professional malpractice must possess relevant knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education.
The expert’s qualifications depend on familiarity with the procedure or treatment at issue, not necessarily an identical professional title.
Qualified expert witnesses generally explain what appropriate medical care required, whether the defendant departed from that standard, and, when necessary, how the alleged negligence caused the patient’s injury.
Without sufficient expert testimony, a medical malpractice claim may fail because the patient cannot establish the applicable standard of care, a breach of that standard, or the cause of the injury.
Rhode Island recognizes a narrow exception when the lack of appropriate care is sufficiently obvious to fall within ordinary knowledge, but most malpractice cases require medical expert support to establish essential elements of the claim.
Rhode Island does not generally require a separate certificate of merit merely to file a medical malpractice complaint, but that does not eliminate the need for an adequately supported case.
How Our Woonsocket Medical Malpractice Attorneys Investigate Claims
A hospital discharge summary may omit details that become important when the timing of treatment, test results, or communication between clinicians is disputed.
We review records from the relevant providers and evaluate what additional evidence may be needed to establish the sequence of events and resulting harm.
Depending on the case, our work may include:
- Obtaining medical records: Examining patient history, consultation notes, emergency treatment records, nursing documentation, diagnostic imaging, laboratory findings, medication administration records, operative reports, and anesthesia documentation.
- Reconstructing the treatment timeline: Comparing symptoms, test orders, reports, consultations, changes in the patient’s condition, and the steps taken in response.
- Arranging medical review: Consulting qualified professionals with expertise relevant to the care being questioned.
- Investigating institutional responsibility: Examining whether a communication failure, staffing decision, hospital procedure, or relationship between providers contributed to the injury.
- Documenting the consequences: Reviewing additional treatment, rehabilitation, lost earnings, future care needs, and the effects of permanent disability.
- Preparing for negotiation or litigation: Communicating with insurers, evaluating settlement offers, preparing legal filings, coordinating expert testimony, and complying with court rules and filing deadlines when litigation is necessary.
Electronic medical-record audit information may sometimes be relevant to the timing of entries or revisions, but an audit timestamp alone does not establish that a provider acted improperly.
Rhode Island Medical Malpractice Laws and Filing Deadlines
Medical malpractice is a form of personal injury law, but these cases are governed by specific Rhode Island requirements, including a statute of limitations that must be evaluated against the patient’s treatment and discovery history.
Although Rhode Island generally allows three years to file both personal injury and medical malpractice lawsuits, different discovery rules and exceptions may affect the filing deadline.
Three-Year Deadline and Discovery Rule
Under R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-1-14.1, a medical malpractice action generally must be commenced within three years of the incident giving rise to the claim.
When the alleged malpractice could not reasonably have been discovered at the time, the statute provides a discovery rule measured from when the malpractice should have been discovered through reasonable diligence.
Learning the full extent of an injury later does not necessarily mean the filing period starts anew, and the discovery analysis depends on the specific facts.
Claims Involving Children or Legal Disabilities
Section 9-1-14.1 includes a separate rule for a child on whose behalf no malpractice lawsuit was brought within the initial three-year period: the injured person generally may bring the claim up to age 21.
Additional rules apply when a suit was filed for the child earlier, particularly if new defendants are later identified.
The statute also addresses qualifying disabilities involving mental incompetence or other circumstances, and these periods should not be assumed to apply without reviewing the medical and litigation history.
Federally Covered Healthcare Providers
Some community health centers and clinicians may have malpractice coverage through the federal government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).
A qualifying federal claim generally must first be presented to the appropriate agency within two years after accrual, and an administrative claim is required before a lawsuit may proceed.
Coverage must be checked for the particular provider, service, and dates of treatment; not every community clinic or hospital is federally covered.
The Health Resources and Services Administration provides a tool for checking deemed health-center status, while 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) sets federal claim deadlines.
A pending complaint to a hospital or an ongoing insurance discussion should not be assumed to preserve any of these filing periods.
Comparative Negligence
Under R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-20-4, Rhode Island applies pure comparative negligence when an injured patient’s own negligent conduct legally contributed to the harm.
For example, an otherwise recoverable $100,000 award would be reduced to $80,000 if the patient were found 20% responsible for the injury.
A provider alleging that a patient missed an appointment or did not follow instructions must still establish how the conduct legally contributed to the claimed injury.
What Compensation Is Available for Medical Malpractice?
A malpractice recovery may address the additional harm caused by negligent treatment, rather than every expense associated with the patient’s original medical condition.
Depending on the evidence, recoverable damages may include:
- Additional medical expenses: Hospitalization, corrective surgery, medication, rehabilitation, and other treatment required because of the negligent care.
- Future medical expenses and assistance: Anticipated costs of corrective procedures, rehabilitation, medication, long-term health care, adaptive equipment, and assistance with daily activities when medical evidence connects those needs to the negligent treatment.
- Lost wages and earning capacity: Past income loss and reduced future earnings attributable to the injury.
- Pain and suffering: Physical pain, emotional distress, lasting impairment, and limitations on ordinary activities resulting from the negligence.
Rhode Island does not impose a general statutory cap on economic or non-economic malpractice damages against private healthcare defendants.
Claims against government defendants may be subject to different damages limits and procedural requirements.
Rhode Island also has a medical-malpractice-specific rule under § 9-19-34.1 concerning the treatment of certain collateral benefit payments when calculating damages.
Those rules may affect the final recovery and require review alongside any insurance or reimbursement obligations.
When negligent care causes a patient’s death, the appropriate representative may also have grounds for a wrongful death claim under Rhode Island law.
Talk to a lawyer and get a free case evaluation today.
What to Do if You Suspect Medical Malpractice
Unexpected symptoms or complications require medical attention whether or not a legal claim may exist.
If you suspect that negligent care harmed you or a family member, consider these steps:
- Address urgent medical needs: Seek prompt care for new symptoms or deterioration instead of delaying treatment to investigate possible negligence.
- Consider an independent medical opinion: Another qualified clinician may assess the current problem and recommend appropriate treatment.
- Request relevant records: Obtain records from each hospital, practice, or clinician involved, including test results, imaging, procedure notes, and discharge instructions.
- Write down the treatment history: Record dates, symptoms, referrals, advice given, and changes in your condition while you remember the details.
- Preserve correspondence and expense records: Save patient-portal messages, appointment information, medical bills, and documentation of missed work.
- Speak with a medical malpractice attorney: Legal review can help identify the appropriate defendants, whether expert analysis is needed, and which filing deadline applies.
- Protect your privacy: Avoid discussing the alleged medical errors, your injuries, or a potential lawsuit on social media. Public statements, photographs, and comments may become relevant to disputed issues in litigation. Preserve existing material and ask your attorney about handling potentially relevant posts rather than deleting them.
You do not need to obtain a complete hospital file or an independent expert report before asking for a legal evaluation.
Contact Our Woonsocket Medical Malpractice Lawyers for a Free Consultation
Medical negligence can leave patients facing permanent injuries, additional treatment, lost income, and substantial financial losses.
Marasco & Nesselbush has recovered millions of dollars for patients and families harmed by medical malpractice, including cases involving surgical negligence, delayed treatment, and wrongful death.
Our Woonsocket medical malpractice lawyers investigate suspected negligence, work with qualified medical experts, and pursue compensation when the evidence supports a claim.
Contact Marasco & Nesselbush for a free consultation about possible medical malpractice, or use the chat feature on this page.
We handle qualifying claims on a contingency fee basis, with no attorney fee unless compensation is recovered.
Litigation expenses and their treatment are explained in the written representation agreement.
