July 13, 2001

A Dallas jury Thursday afternoon found Siemens Medical Systems Inc. liable for the death of a Kerrville man and awarded $7 million to the widow, attorneys for the plaintiff said Friday. The jury found Siemens Medical, based in Iselin, N.J., liable for the defective design of a ventilator, which left the man, Bill Anderson, unable to breathe following his heart-bypass surgery in 1996, according to Dallas law firm Sayles Lidji & Werbner.

"This award sends a message to Siemens Medical Systems that they should take another look at their many ventilators, of this same design, that are in use in hospitals throughout the country," said attorney Dick Sayles, who represented Anderson's widow, Sandra Jo Anderson.

No negligence was found on the part of the doctors and staff at St. Luke's Hospital in San Antonio, where Bill Anderson underwent the surgery.

Anderson had successful heart bypass surgery at St. Luke's in May 1996 and was put on a Siemens Servo 900C ventilator in the recovery room. Attorneys said at some point while in the recovery room the ventilator was inexplicably switched from an automatic breathing mode to a manual mode, cutting off his air supply. In the manual mode, the machine's apnea alarm is disabled, and the medical personnel did not notice Anderson was not breathing, attorneys said. Anderson eventually went into cardiac arrest. He survived, but during resuscitative attempts suffered a debilitating stroke which left him almost completely paralyzed. He died 23 months later in 1998 from complications of the stroke and pneumonia at the age of 68.

The $7 million award included $500,000 in past actual damages and $5.5 million in future damages for Sandra Jo Anderson, as well as $1 million in actual damages for Bill Anderson for the 23 months prior to his death.

Officials at Siemens Medical were not immediately available to comment.