Settlement: $3 million

Doctor says he never got report on man who died.

The Kentucky Trial Court Review, a private verdict-tracking service in Kentucky, acknowledged that the $3,000,000 settlement for the family of Scott Allen Thompson, matched the largest jury verdict return in Kentucky last year in medical malpractice cases.

The $3,000,000 settlement was reached after a jury failed to reach a decision following two days of intense deliberation.

Plaintiffs' attorney, William F. McMurry, explained that the hung jury demonstrates how difficult it is to convince juries in Kentucky that doctors are at fault -- even in a case valued at millions of dollars by a doctor's own insurance carrier.

On September 6, 1994, Scott Allen Thompson sought the advice of urologist, Dr. John Hubbard, after seeing blood in his urine. Dr. Hubbard performed a retrograde pyelogram x-ray study of Scott's left kidney at Baptist Hospital East. The x-rays generated from this study were reviewed by a staff radiologist at Baptist Hospital.

The staff radiologist, Dennis Jankowski, found a small mass in Scott's kidney, which he reported in writing. However, the written report was never read by Dr. John Hubbard, and the information about the mass in the kidney was never communicated to Scott. He was told by his doctor, Dr. John Hubbard, that his problem was a kidney stone, which had passed.

Four years later, Scott again was experiencing blood in his urine. This time, upon evaluation by Dr. Hubbard, it was determined that he had an 11 centimeter tumor on his left kidney, which cancer had already spread throughout his body. Scott died months later.

Dr. Hubbard soon learned that he had never received the earlier report and decided not to tell Scott about the earlier report. Scott actually discovered the earlier report when he took it upon himself to obtain copies of his records at Baptist East to take to Boston for aggressive chemotherapy.

Dr. Hubbard defended his decision not to tell Scott about the earlier report because he didn't think "it would help him in any way, besides worry him ... what good would it do for a young man that's got this?"

Attorney McMurry responded by stating: "It might prove somebody was accountable, Dr. Hubbard, that's what it would do. It would have given the man the knowledge he needed to right a wrong, that's why he needed to know and should have been told by you."