The National Trial Lawyers members Ricardo Echeverria and Steven A. Heimberg have secured what may be the largest verdict ever reached in Fresno (California) Superior Court: a total of $68 million to the family of a 76-year-old man left in a vegetative coma because of the medical negligence of heart surgeon Pervaiz Chaudry, according to The Fresno Bee:
In Chaudhry's trial, the jury award follows its ruling on March 1 that he was negligent for leaving the operating room and ordering his physician assistant, Bella Albakova — who happened to be his girlfriend at the time — to close the chest of 70-year-old Silvino Perez, a retired farm and packinghouse worker from Sanger.
While Chaudhry was headed to a business luncheon in northeast Fresno after the surgery in April 2012, Perez lost so much blood that his brain was starved of oxygen, causing him to go into a coma.