Interior view of an empty doctor's office exam room
READING, Pa. – A Berks County jury has awarded more than $4 million to the children of a woman whose death was blamed on a gastroenterologist misdiagnosing a bleeding ulcer.
The verdict was rendered Sept. 18, the law firm Kline & Specter has announced. After a five-day trial, jurors awarded $4 million in wrongful death damages and $325,000 in Survival Act damages to the children of Kelly Lynn Jones.
"We are grateful that the jury held [the gastroenterologist] accountable for failing to properly treat Ms. Jones and that they recognized the significant loss suffered by our clients from the untimely and unnecessary death of their mother," Kline & Specter attorneys David Inscho and Mark Fuchs said.
Severe abdominal pain sent Jones to an urgent care and emergency room in October 2021, and a doctor recommended she been seen by a gastroenterologist to investigate potential bleeding. Her medical history suggested bleeding, the firm said, but instead the specialist attributed her condition to multiple myeloma, a cancer in bone marrow.
Other specialists disagreed in the following days and called for an upper endoscopy to look for an ulcer. But because the gastroenterologist had signed off on her care, no GI doctor reassessed her symptoms, the firm said.
After discharge from the hospital, her son found her on a couch “barely responsive,” the firm said. The ulcer was eventually treated after Jones had suffered a significant brain injury caused by a lack of oxygen, and she died two months later.
