NAUGATUCK — A borough family was awarded nearly $6 million Wednesday by a Waterbury Superior Court jury that determined a 68-year-old man who went to Hartford Hospital for a routine elective heart surgery died as a result of negligence and malpractice, an attorney for the family said.
William Ashmore Sr., entered Hartford Hospital in October 2011 for surgery to repair a valve that was leaking and causing him shortness of breath, said Eric Smith of Faxon Law Group in New Haven, which represented the Ashford family.
While the surgery was successful, Smith said, complications arose on his second recovery day in the hospital, when his heart rate began to speed up — a common event after such a procedure.
The nurse, he said, did not read Ashmore’s vital signs before administering heart-slowing medication, and did not know his heart rate had already returned to normal naturally.
That, Smith said, caused the man’s heart rate to slow to a dangerous level, and alarms began to sound that should have alerted the staff to his condition.
At that point, he said, hospital personnel should have connected Ashmore’s pacemaker wires — left in his chest by his heart surgeon for precisely this purpose — to the pacemaker, but they did not.
After the third low-heart-rate alarm sounded, Smith said, Ashmore complained of leg pain, and hospital personnel administered to him a powerful narcotic that slowed his heart even more, to the point in which it stopped. He died three days later.
“Their lack of attention is precisely what caused his death,” Smith said. “That was not only supported by the experts we brought in to trial for that purpose, but also supported by the heart surgeon who successfully performed the heart surgery on him.”
Ashmore was survived by his wife, a son, two daughters and a grandson.
“It’s a bittersweet victory for them. The money is a representation of accountability, and the significant loss that they experienced and Mr. Ashmore experienced,” Smith said, adding the award was $5.8 million. “When I looked over at Mrs. Ashmore and I saw the tears in her eyes, I knew that what she most appreciated from hearing that verdict was the jury holding the hospital accountable for what happened.”
