Daily Journal

The loud snoring of her husband awakened Michelle Moore on Feb. 22, 1999. It was the beginning of the end of their life together.

"Taylor was blue when they turned the lights on," she said of the 6 a.m. hospital room scene. "I remember seeing him."

Fifteen months later, 29-year-old Taylor Moore died of bloodstream complications in a Benton, Ark., rehabilitation facility. In between, the former BenchCraft marketing manager spent long days in intensive care, in rehab facilities in Birmingham, New Albany and Benton, and at his Tupelo home, where he was incapable of taking care of himself or talking to his newborn son, Preston, born two months after Taylor was stricken.

In February - three years after a head injury prompted the illness - a Lee County jury awarded Moore's family $5 million to compensate for his medical care, lost earnings and pain and suffering.

It's a case where Michelle Moore and her attorneys believed the civil justice system worked well. But a Forbes magazine cover story in May held up the judgment against North Mississippi Health Services and neurosurgeon Walter Eckman as a prime example of the country's "tort mess."

"He deserved to be treated as a productive member of the community," Michelle Moore said of Taylor. "And for this case to be held up as wrong is just not right."

Jackson attorney Walter Morrison, who helped represent the Moores, thinks the case is an example of why tort reform advocates should be cautious about changing the civil justice system. His legal team asked for $8 million to $10 million in damages but the jury in conservative Lee County returned with $5 million: $2 million against the hospital, which is not appealing; and $3 million against Eckman and his insurer, who are appealing. No punitive damages were sought but lawyers did seek reimbursed medical care in excess of $500,000 and $1.4 million in lost future wages based on Taylor Moore's $80,000 annual salary.

Said Morrison of proposed caps on noneconomic damages, "I think we run into a problem when they try to start categorizing cases with a broad brush."

A unique case

Very little about the Moore case is typical.

Taylor Moore's problems began outside the hospital but his legal team asserted that negligent care sent his health on a downward spiral.

On a Saturday night, Moore suffered amnesia and disorientation after striking his head in a movie theater restroom. No one knows if he slipped, tripped or was hit. Moore was admitted to North Mississippi Medical Center about 2 a.m. after treatment and a CT scan in the emergency room. Brain contusions were diagnosed and Eckman treated Moore in person about seven hours later, Morrison said.

The neurosurgeon consulted with nurses three times by phone throughout Sunday, when Moore's blood pressure rose as high at 190/120, his widow said.

By the time his respiratory arrest awoke Michelle the following morning, massive bleeding and swelling had caused Taylor's brain to herniate, filling the lower cranial cavity and choking off blood supply, Morrison said. Surgery the next day relieved pressure but irreversible brain damage had been done, he said.

A cornerstone of the Moores' case rested with "neuro-checks" that were ordered after the emergency room observation but not properly conducted the night before the respiratory arrest, Morrison said. Subtle signs could have tipped the staff off to brain herniation earlier, he said.

Eckman, who heads the state neurosurgeons association, said the appeal prevents him from commenting on particulars of the case. But he warns against people thinking doctors should catch everything in time to prevent disability.

"It really shouldn't be tort reform," Eckman said. "It should be some major change in the way we correct wrongs in our society. The path we're on today is going to be very destructive to our society."

He cited a nearly $80 million judgment in favor of a disabled woman against an Orlando hospital that could bankrupt that healthcare system. Medicare will pay the woman's health expenses, Eckman said, with the huge judgment representing a kind of profiteering.

"We've gotten into a mode of thinking where we think everything should be a perfect world," Eckman said. "(The trial attorneys) have lost their way as a profession as far as I'm concerned, and the public has somehow managed to go along with this."

Michelle Moore wishes she had insisted on extra measures before her husband's decline, but it's too late.

"If I could go back, there's a thousand things I would change," said Moore, who recently remarried and moved to Little Rock, Ark. "I turned Taylor over to the doctor. I trusted him. Taylor was left to his professional care and I don't think he did his job."

Said Morrison, "I defy anybody to tell me that the family of this man - knowing what he was and what he turned out to be - is not deserving of five million dollars."