Howard Schaffner
Howard Schaffner
Bryan Hofeld
Bryan Hofeld

A Cook County jury has awarded more than $10 million to a wife and her husband who learned he was suffering from terminal cancer after a pathologist initially misinterpreted biopsy results that could have helped catch the disease.

The verdict came Monday in plaintiffs Juan and Rosa Avila’s medical negligence case against pathologist Andre Balla.

The couple sued in 2010, alleging Balla diagnosed a lump in the back of one of Juan’s legs as benign in April 2008 and recorded it in his medical records.

The lump behind now 68-year-old Juan Avila’s right thigh existed for several years before he sought treatment. But in April 2008 he received a core needle biopsy on the 4-inch mass at the University of Illinois Hospital.

After interpreting the test results, Balla reported that the mass was likely inflammation stemming from a tendon surgery Avila underwent in 2007 on the same leg, said partner Bryan Hofeld of Hofeld & Schaffner, who represented the plaintiffs.

“He was, of course, very wrong,” said partner Howard Schaffner of Hofeld & Schaffner, who also represented the Avilas.

Avila spent the next 14 months consulting “nine or 10” different physicians for more opinions on the mass, Hofeld said. However, he said, those physicians didn’t consider cancer because of Balla’s 2008 report indicating the lump wasn’t suspicious.

He underwent an open biopsy in May 2009 — in which a larger sample is extracted for testing. Results of that test revealed the mass was cancerous.

“Over this time … that mass in his leg increased in size from four inches in 2008 to a mass that extended from his buttocks all the way down to his knee,” Schaffner said. “When they finally do diagnose his cancer, they find that it is already extended to his lungs, so at that point he was terminal.”

Avila has since undergone numerous rounds of treatment for the disease, Hofeld said.

And although he is still alive, Avila’s condition has deteriorated to the point that he is on an oxygen supply and receiving hospice care. He did not attend his trial “even though he very much wanted to,” Schaffner said.

The Avilas’ suit alleged Balla failed to report the appropriate pathologic diagnosis for the tissue taken during his core biopsy. They also alleged that Balla failed to review available information in his medical chart to determine how long the mass had been present on his leg.

With a timely diagnosis, they contended, Avila had a 60 percent chance of being cured. They also contended that had Balla consulted Avila’s medical chart, he would have learned that the mass had existed before he received the tendon surgery in 2007.

Partner Mark J. Lura and associate Sarah E. Nelson of Anderson, Rasor & Partners LLP represented the defendant. Citing the case’s status as pending litigation before the court, they declined to comment.

The parties did not attempt to mediate the case, Hofeld said, and Balla never made an offer to settle ahead of their two week-trial before Circuit Judge Lorna E. Propes.

The jury awarded Juan Avila $1.5 million for experienced and future loss of a normal life, $2 million for his shortened life expectancy, $3 million for experienced and future pain and suffering and $1,054,000 for medical costs. It also awarded Rosa Avila $2.5 million for her experienced and future loss of companionship and society.

Although the jury returned a verdict in his clients’ favor, Schaffner said the only good thing about it is that “it brings an end to a case that was very important to him.”

“One of the things this does is it puts his mind at ease about his wife and her being taken care of,” he said. “That has been a major concern for him.”

The case is Juan Avila, et al., v. Andre Balla, M.D., 10 L 11549.