• 19 Years After Death, Brooklyn Jury Delivers $5M Verdict in Case of Kidney Transplant Complications

    Marietta Avetisian passed away from kidney transplant complications in 2000. - Photo courtesy: Frank A. Delle Donne

    After a month-long medical malpractice trial, a Brooklyn jury has awarded $5 million to the estate of a woman whose hospital and surgeon failed to diagnose an ongoing—and ultimately dangerous and damaging—urine leak that first developed during her 1999 kidney transplant operation.

    The woman died nearly a year and a half after the transplant surgery, due to a series of complications—including losing her new kidney and being forced back onto dialysis—that her lawyers argued sprang from a urine leak going undiagnosed. The jury found causation for her injuries but not for her death.