Farmingdale man wins $40M medical malpractice lawsuit against two Long Island hospitals following stroke

A Farmingdale man won a $40 million jury verdict in Nassau County Supreme Court after two Long Island hospitals failed to react properly to a stroke he suffered in 2018.

Charlemagne Hobour, 52, must use a wheelchair for the rest of his life and was left paralyzed on his left side after St. Joseph and Good Samaritan University hospitals did not give him the medication and procedures for a blood clot that formed in his brain, according to the lawsuit.

Hobour, a New York City cab driver with no prior medical condition, was home on April 4, 2018, looking after his twin sons when he began to experience slurred speech, weakness in his arms and legs and drooping on the left side of his face, according to his lawyer, Stuart Finz.

When he could not reach his wife, Beatrice Milord, a certified nursing assistant, he called 911, his lawyer said.

Emergency services responders with the Farmingdale Fire Department arrived within minutes and diagnosed Hobour, a Haitian immigrant, as a stroke victim and took him to St. Joseph's in Bethpage.

Doctors failed to administer a clot-busting drug called Tissue Plasminogen Activator, or tPA, which would renew blood flow to the brain, in the 4½ hour window that would prevent long-term damage, the lawsuit argued.

“Despite the patient reporting that his symptoms began approximately 30 minutes prior to arriving to St. Joseph Hospital, the emergency department disregarded that information,” said Finz, of the Mineola-based firm Finz & Finz.

St. Joseph’s doctors had Hobour transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip, where they could perform a procedure called a mechanical thrombectomy to manually remove the clot from his brain.

The doctors there, however, decided that too much of the brain tissue had been damaged and declined to perform the surgery.

“As a result of departures from accepted standards of medical practice at both St. Joseph Hospital and Good Samaritan Hospital, the patient’s stroke continued to progress untreated while he remained in the hospital, leaving him paralyzed on the left side and dependent on others for nearly all aspects of daily living,” Finz said in a statement.

The attorney said that the couple, who also have an adult daughter, have to raise two 9-year-old boys while dealing with Hobour's disability.

“The truth came out during the trial period,” Hobour said in a statement. “I am so thankful to the jury and my attorneys. It has been a long road, but I feel that I have a new lease on life and now will be able to afford all of the therapy and care that I need, period. I thank the jury for what they did.”

The hospitals, which are both part of the Catholic Health network, maintain that they provided proper treatment.

“We are disappointed in the outcome of this case. Patient safety and quality remain our top priorities at Catholic Health," spokeswoman Lisa Greiner said. "We believe the physicians at both Good Samaritan University Hospital and St. Joseph Hospital provided care consistent with established best practices for stroke treatment and met the clinical standards expected in such a complex situation."

Greiner added that the state Department of Health designated Good Samaritan as the first comprehensive stroke center on Long Island.