A jury awarded $750,000 in damages Friday afternoon to a woman who suffered permanent harm after getting hip replacement surgery at an Ellsworth hospital.
The surgeon who performed the surgery failed to read the woman’s correct post-operative X-ray and later sawed a centimeter-long gap in her femur.
The nine-person Ellsworth jury found that orthopedic surgeon Peter Copithorne and Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital harmed Mary Shea, 71, by providing negligent medical care, leaving her with permanent physical impairment and $291,000 in medical bills.
“This is a really important moment for members of the community to stand up and to say that what happened was not ok,” Shea’s attorney, Elizabeth Kayatta, told the Bangor Daily News. “When doctors make medical errors, they need to be held accountable for those errors in a meaningful way.”
The jury deliberated for a little under four hours after three days of witness testimony at Hancock County Superior Court.
Civil suits in Maine do not require a unanimous jury: three of the jurors did not concur with the final verdict.
“Though we are disappointed with the verdict in this matter, we respect the jury’s decision,” Copithorne’s attorney, Douglas Morgan, said. “More importantly, we wish Mary Shea the best and continued good health moving forward.”
Shea sued Copithorne over hip replacement surgeries he performed on her right side in 2019. The first surgery, in February of that year, left a routine complication that should have been quickly repaired had it been noticed within the two month “easy revision” window, the lawsuit said.
That didn’t happen.
Rather, Copithorne failed to read Shea’s X-ray during a follow up visit in the month after her surgery. He didn’t read the correct X-ray until over two months later, requiring that she undergo a much more invasive procedure to fix the complication, Kayatta said in court.
During that second surgery, a procedure Copithorne had only performed alone once before, he left a centimeter long gap in Shea’s femur – a bone that’s essential for mobility – after unsuccessfully using a wire to close the opening, the lawsuit said.
It was then that Shea fled Copithorne’s care, seeking treatment with a Portland surgeon to fix her femur and undergo another revision surgery.
From there, she began years of injections, medication regimens, physical therapies and various procedures to mitigate her pain, weakness and mobility problems, according to testimony from Victoria Brander, a physician and expert witness who was not involved in Shea’s treatment.
Copithorne, who – like Shea – testified at trial, said he’d taken accountability for failing to read the correct x-ray. Morgan acknowledged Copithorne’s actions were negligent but said they did not directly cause Shea’s various medical complications. The jury disagreed.
Shea would have needed an osteotomy – the second invasive surgery when Copithorne sawed into her femur – regardless of whether he read the X-ray just after the first hip replacement surgery or, as he did, over two months later, Morgan said.
Two physicians testified against that position, saying the osteotomy would not have been needed had Copithorne read Shea’s X-rays the day they were taken, March 20, 2019.
He read the correct x-rays a little over two months later on May 24, 2019. Shea entered surgery 10 days later.
During those two months, between her March 20 x-rays and May 24 follow-up appointment, the muscles and tendons around Shea’s femur atrophied, causing her with permanent weakness and mobility issues, Kayatta said.
That could have been prevented or minimized with earlier intervention, Kayatta said.
Copithorne recorded in Shea’s medical documentation that he had read her March 20 X-rays with her, although he later amended the note to reflect he had read the wrong film.
The original note was made with auto-generated language, a common practice for physicians.
The Milbridge woman, who was once an avid hiker and kayaker, has slowed down in the years since these surgeries, grappling with a mountain of medical bills, mental health challenges and new physical limitations, Kayatta said.
Shea, who was 64 at the time of her surgeries with Copithorne, previously had a successful left hip replacement surgery in 2013. Kayatta and two physician experts pointed to that surgery as an indicator for how Shea should have healed from another hip replacement.
Instead, she required several revision surgeries and was billed nearly $300,000 for her right hip replacement treatment — about $250,000 more than how much her left hip cost, according to Brander, a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist at Northwestern Medicine.
Copithorne is the second highest paid physician at Northern Light, the lawsuit said. ProPublica reported he earned $712,019 for the fiscal year ending in September 2024.
