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Maricopa County Pays $4 Million to Settle Lawsuit

Ryan Job served the United States as a Navy SEAL, but in the course of his service he suffered grievous injuries while on active duty in Iraq. A sniper's bullet struck his machine gun, sending metal splinters flying. Some of the shrapnel lodged in Ryan's brain, while other metal caused severe disfigurement to his facial structure, destroyed his right eye and eventually caused him to go blind in the left eye. A fellow SEAL who arrived to help says that he was shocked to see that Ryan had survived, despite the fact that the blast had blown open the entire right side of his head. Many people would have given up on life after suffering such disastrous injuries, but Ryan Job took his survival as the motivation to tackle the rest of his life with a spirit of adventure, climbing 14,411 foot Mt. Rainier and training to compete in a triathlon. After overcoming so much and looking forward to a long and rich life with his wife, 28-year old Ryan suddenly died in the last place it would have been expected: in a hospital bed.

The tragic and premature death of Ryan Job did not occur during invasive surgery, and he was not in the hospital for treatment of injuries suffered in a catastrophic car accident. On the contrary, Ryan was lying peacefully in his bed at the Maricopa Medical Center, where he was recovering from a successful facial reconstruction surgery. The hospital records report that his "unexpected death" was caused by "hospital-acquired injuries," but this vague terminology does not paint the full picture of why Ryan died at such a young age and after surviving so much adversity. After extensive investigation and use of court orders to obtain vital documents, it was discovered that Ryan Job was killed by a lethal combination of narcotic painkillers and respiratory-depressive medicines following his surgery. Simply put, his death was caused by medical malpractice.

How Our Tucson Personal Injury Lawyers Helped

The incident began in September of 2009 when Ryan checked into the hospital to begin a series of reconstructive surgeries which he hoped would help him regain his normal appearance. It was two days following the second surgery that he was given the fatal overdose on painkillers, which included oxycodone, fentanyl and morphine. Painkiller overdose is now among the most common causes of fatal overdose nationwide, killing 15,000 people on a yearly basis. Most of these deaths, however, occur among patients who administer excessive doses to themselves; a patient who is being given the drugs by medical personnel in a hospital bed shouldn't have to worry about the risk of overdose. Fortunately, the attorneys of Kinerk, Schmidt & Sethi, PLLC were ready to take action on the behalf of the family members who were left grieving after Ryan's death. Our Tucson personal injury lawyers succeeded in claiming $4 million in monetary damages to compensate the Job family for their loss, an amount which Maricopa County has agreed to pay in an out-of-court settlement.

Read a full write-up on this case by following this linkto AZCentral.com.