Georgia jury awards Aiken couple $3.5 million in lawsuit against Augusta hospital

A Richmond County jury awarded an Aiken man and his wife more than $3 million from a lawsuit that alleged an outpatient procedure at then-Trinity Hospital in Augusta left the man injured.

Augusta Hospital LLC, the legal entity over Trinity at the time of the procedure, will pay Willie Wright $3.2 million and his wife, Glory Wright, $308,000, according to the verdict sheet from the Wednesday, Dec. 20, decision.

“We are grateful that Willie and Glory Wright have finally achieved justice. It’s been a long time coming,” attorneys Ken and Caleb Connor, who represented the Wrights, said in a media release.

The verdict came more than five years after the case was filed. Caleb Connor said the case was part of the backlog caused by COVID-related court delays.

Trinity Hospital, which has changed hands and names at least twice since the procedure, is now the Piedmont Augusta Hospital Summerville Campus of Georgia-based Piedmont Healthcare. The hospital did not immediately respond to phone and email messages requesting comment.

On Nov. 3, 2016, Wright had a procedure to insert a filter meant to trap blood clots two weeks ahead of a scheduled gastric bypass.

“It was supposed to be a simple procedure in and out, 30 minutes,” Caleb Connor said. 

The Wrights alleged that the hospital used the wrong equipment during a procedure, which kept the doctor from adequately seeing where he was operating. They also alleged the hospital violated the manufacturer’s operating instructions and warning for the machine used in an attempt to remove the filter, which resulted in the machine’s failure.

“The defense attempted to blame everybody,” Caleb Connor said. “The surgeon, the machine itself, the patient, they wanted to blame everybody and not acknowledge it was their machine, it broke and we contend they had responsibility for that.”

The filter was removed on the third attempt, which came after an overnight stay in an intensive care unit. After the filter was removed, Wright’s attorneys said he had a more than two-month hospital stay and $650,000 in medical bills — more than $440,00 of that tally coming from Trinity Hospital, and he’s still dealing with long-term health problems from the procedure.