Corboy & Demetrio Obtains $1.06M Verdict for Delayed Diagnosis for Cured Patient

In a case where the patient made a full recovery and a doctor made no pre-trial settlement offer, Corboy & Demetrio Partners Mike Ditore and Chad Kasdin have obtained a $1,055,000 Cook County jury verdict against Chicago Obstetrician and Gynecologist Catherine Clinton, M.D., and Chicago Women's Health Group at Northwestern, S.C.

It took jurors only three hours after a six-day trial to return its verdict in favor of Corboy & Demetrio’s client, a 38-year-old mother who had recently given birth to her second child in 2021 when Dr. Clinton misdiagnosed a choriocarcinoma mass in her uterus and treated her, instead, for an ectopic pregnancy. Choriocarcinoma is a rare cancer occurring in about 1 in 150,000 pregnancies.

“While our client was eventually diagnosed correctly 10 weeks later and ended up making a full recovery, she went through several months of pain and emotional distress, and the jurors saw that,” Ditore, lead attorney on the case, said.

“The defense contested liability, causation and damages, and, in fact, asserted that our client suffered no damages at all,” Ditore added.

Evidence showed that Dr. Clinton failed the simple next step of referring the patient to a cancer doctor when cancer was a possibility as she, herself, suspected the mass could be choriocarcinoma. As a result, the patient’s correct treatment was delayed.

“Thankfully, our client eventually got the treatment she needed and is now cancer free.  The hardest part of the case was telling her story for those 3-4 months when things didn’t look so good for her,” said Kasdin, who joined Corboy & Demetrio in 2024 with more than two decades of experience representing defendants in medical malpractice litigation.

“This was Chad’s first trial as a plaintiff’s medical malpractice lawyer, and I think we can clearly see how truly valuable his defense experience is and will be in countless future cases,” said Corboy & Demetrio Managing Partner Ken Lumb.

In 2021, the plaintiff went to Dr. Clinton after she started experiencing vaginal bleeding and had tested positive for pregnancy with elevated hCG levels.

Evidence at trial showed that Dr. Clinton ordered that the patient undergo an ultrasound of her uterus which demonstrated a mass that could be either an ectopic pregnancy or early choriocarcinoma.   Evidence was presented that Dr. Clinton utilized a low-dose methotrexate protocol used to treat interstitial and/or ectopic pregnancies, not the protocol used to treat choriocarcinoma.  These low doses of methotrexate made the cancer resistant to appropriate methotrexate treatment later, resulting in harsher chemotherapy.

Dr. Clinton treated the patient for the next ten weeks and did not refer her to an oncologist, even when cancer became the likely diagnosis. The Plaintiff received a biopsy ten weeks after initial contact with Dr. Clinton which revealed the rare cancer, for which the patient was treated successfully.

The negligence lawsuit alleged Dr. Clinton and her employer failed to order an appropriate referral to a gynecological oncologist, failed to adequately evaluate the differential diagnosis, inappropriately administered methotrexate, and failed to timely diagnose the choriocarcinoma.

“This case serves as a reminder to the insurance companies that insure these doctors that just because a patient may look ok on the outside, that does not mean she hasn’t gone through an awful lot and experienced significant damages,” Ditore said.

Cook Co. Circuit Judge Scott D. McKenna presided over the trial.