McKean County is a picturesque rural area located at the northern-most point of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, sharing the border with New York. The County Court of Common Pleas has a track record that has not been favorable to plaintiffs.
“We knew we were facing tough odds, just based on the history of McKean County,” recalled Pribanic & Pribanic Co-Founder Victor H. Pribanic. “Judge Christopher Hauser had never presided over a case where the jury sided with an injured patient in a medical malpractice case.”
In fact, publicly available records indicated that a jury verdict had not been rendered since the start of the 21st century. Pribanic assumed this was likely among the reasons why his clients were offered an extremely low settlement from the defense. Still, he acknowledged the legal arena he was entering and prepared for trial in June 2023.
The Challenge
Pribanic’s client was a 66-year-old elementary school janitor who had lost his left leg below the knee due to the negligence of his physicians; emergency room doctors and his primary care physician (PCP) failed to properly assess his left foot and did not detect an abscess that eventually spread, necessitating an amputation below the knee.
The six-day trial was about to break for a weekend when the defense presented surprise testimony from an emergency room doctor, describing Pribanic’s client as reckless and not taking prescribed antibiotics. That weekend, attorney Sherie Painter Canin, who tried the case along with Pribanic, pored over files and uncovered a hospital document given to the victim with specific instructions for him to stop taking the first antibiotic. As Pribanic cross-examined the ER doctor the following Monday, he was able to expose the mistruths by displaying the defendant doctors’ signature at the bottom of the script.
The Solution
Next, Pribanic cross-examined the defense’s internal medicine expert. He used a hypothetical example of caring for one of his English Settlers, Pitty Pat, whose paw was injured during a hunting excursion; his analogy included the many steps he and the veterinarian would take to ensure they knew where the dog’s injury was and how he’d present the information to a veterinarian. Pribanic had received some chuckles throughout the tale, and finally asked the doctor, “Was my client entitled at least as good a level of care Pitty Pat received?”
The doctor responded, “Yes,” to which Pribanic replied, “Was it done?” And he had to reply, truthfully, “It wasn’t documented.”
“I suspected the defense lawyers would poke fun at me as well, which they did during closing arguments,” said Pribanic, a career-long member of the American Association for Justice and the Pennsylvania Association of Trial Lawyers. “But this helped strengthen our case by reinforcing in the minds of the jury just how simply our client’s injury could have been avoided.”
It is this sort of creative thinking that has kept Victor Pribanic at the forefront of catastrophic injury law, and why he was named Best Lawyers “Lawyer of the Year” in 2024 in Pittsburgh in two areas – Product Liability Litigation–Plaintiffs and Medical Malpractice–Plaintiffs. To date, he has earned this honor 10 times since 2010, having previously won four times for Product Liability Litigation, three times for Medical Malpractice, and once for Personal Injury Litigation.
The Record-Breaking Result
The strategy proved effective. The jury returned a $3.25 million verdict for the client, the first medical malpractice plaintiff award since 2000 and the largest verdict in the history of McKean County. As they often do, one of the jurors later contacted Pribanic & Pribanic to commend Victor for his representation.
“I asked her if the jury was bothered by my analogy to Pitty Pat,” Pribanic said. “She replied, ‘Not at all. We all realized this man had received worse treatment than a dog.’ It was an important trial where we were bucking the odds.”
These sorts of challenges drive Pribanic & Pribanic’s team, and their innovative solutions enable them to proudly maintain their place as leaders in catastrophic injury law.
