A Bench of Justices C K Prasad and V Gopala Gowda raised the
compensation amount of Rs 1.73 crore, awarded by the National Consumer
Dispute Redressal Commission (NCDRC) in 2011, to Rs 5.96 crore to Kunal
Saha, an AIDS researcher in Ohio, and asked the Advanced Medicare and
Research Institute (AMRI) and the doctors to pay the amount within eight
weeks along with interest at the rate of 6 per cent from the date of
filing of the case in 1999
The SC in its common judgement, partly allowed the appeals of
Saha, who had sought enhancement of compensation, and three senior
Kolkata-based doctors, Dr Sukumar Mukherjee, Dr B N Halder and Dr Balram
Prasad
NCDRC, in its judgement, had said AMRI and Dr Mukherjee would pay Rs
40.4 lakh each to Saha, while two other doctors, Halder and Prasad,
would pay Rs 26.93 lakh each to him
The SC said out of the total amount, Dr Balram Prasad and Dr
Sukumar Mukherjee will pay Rs 10 lakh each and Dr Baidyanath Halder will
have to pay Rs five lakh to Saha within eight weeks
One of the four treating doctors, Abani Roychowdhury, died during the pendency of case
The rest of the amount, along with the interest, will be paid by the
hospital, it said, adding that a compliance report be filed before it
after the payment of the compensation.
Terming the verdict as “historic”, Dr. Saha in an email from the US
said,”this will have a major impact on medical negligence and standard
of medical care in India".
He said, “This will send a strong message to all negligent doctors and
unscrupulous hospitals that are reaping(sic) innocent patients everyday
across India.”
The Case History
- Anuradha, a child psychologist, had come to her home town Kolkata in March 1998 on a summer vacation.
- Anuradha complained of skin rashes and on April 25, had consulted Dr Sukumar Mukherjee, who, without prescribing any medicine, simply asked her to take rest.
- As rashes reappeared more aggressively on May 7, 1998, Dr Mukherjee prescribed Depomedrol injection 80 mg twice daily, a step which was later faulted by experts at the apex court.
- After administration of the injection, Anuradha’s condition deteriorated rapidly following which she had to be admitted at AMRI on May 11 under Dr Mukherjee’s supervision.
- As Anuradha’s condition failed to improve, she was flown to Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai, where she was found to be suffering from a rare and deadly skin disease -- Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis (TEN). She died there on May 28, 1998.
- Dr. Saha, in his plea before NCDRC, had demanded a record Rs 77 crore as compensation.Also Dr. Saha had then filed a criminal as well as civil case against the doctors and both the hospitals on the ground that they were grossly negligent in her treatment leading to her death.
- In 2009, though the apex court absolved the doctors and the hospitals of criminal liability for medical negligence, it had held them culpable of civil liabilities and referred Saha’s plea for compensation under provisions of the Consumer Protection Act to NCDRC, which, had in 2006, dismissed, the case.
- After the NCDRC judgement, Saha had again moved the SC and the three doctors had also filed an appeal before it.
Note
In May 2009, the apex court had awarded a record compensation of Rs one
crore to wheelchair-bound Infosys engineer Prashant S Dhananka for
medical negligence in a surgery by Hyderabad’s Nizam Institute of
Medical Sciences (NIMS) which damaged his spinal chord. He died in 2011.
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