CARSON CITY - The Nevada Supreme Court has refused to let Las Vegas neurosurgeon and former lieutenant governor Lonnie Hammargren out of a medical malpractice suit.
The court's ruling Wednesday favored William Pollack, who suffered severe spinal damage from three ruptured vertebrae and is now a paraplegic.
Pollack sued emergency room physician Brenna Nance who examined him at St. Rose Dominican in southern Nevada. And he sued Hammargren, who Nance said was the on-call neurosurgeon when Pollack was examined.
According to legal papers filed with the Supreme Court, Nance described Pollack's case to Hammargren by phone, and Hammargren said Pollack ''was not manifesting a surgical emergency.''
Nance said she considered Hammargren the expert, and took his advice.
But Pollack was suffering from a compressed, herniated disk that damaged his spinal cord because it was untreated, Pollack's lawyers said. Hammargren said he should be dismissed from the lawsuit because he had no legal duty to Pollack. He also said Nance never actually called him for advice and that, if she had, he would have ordered a CAT scan before deciding there was no surgical emergency.
Clark County District Judge Mark Denton refused to dismiss Hammargren from the suit and he appealed to the Supreme Court.
