After eight days of trial, a Fulton County jury took about 90 minutes to deliver a defense verdict in a medical malpractice case involving a 12-year-old boy who developed an inflammation that ultimately cost him his right eye.

Lead defense attorney Robert Monyak said the lawyers for the plaintiffs—the patient, now 17, and his father—asked for $7 million in closing arguments.

There was no dispute concerning “the consequences of lost vision in the right eye, the disfigurement, his eye is shrunken and he now wears a prosthesis,” said Monyak, who represented two defendant ophthalmologists with Peters & Monyak associate Melissa Johnson.

The plaintiff, identified as “L.T.,” since the case was filed when he was a minor, and his father are represented by Curtis Dickenson and Laura Barron of Woodstock's Dickinson Law Firm.

Dickenson said he and his clients are considering their options. 

“This was a hard-fought case, and we're obviously disappointed with the verdict,” Dickinson said. “We believe the doctors had multiple opportunities to prevent this tragedy. We had a chance to take our case before a jury, and we understand that has consequences.”

“Bob Monyak is a fine attorney, and he did a wonderful job, as he usually does,” he,added.

According to Monyak and court filings, L.T. was raking leaves in the yard with his family in 2013 when he felt something “like an eyelash in his eye.”    

His eye began to itch and get red over the next two days, and his mother took him to see his pediatrician. A nurse practitioner diagnosed him with “mild micro abrasions” and a possible allergy and prescribed an antibiotic ointment and antihistamine eye drops, according to the pretrial order.

The teenager's condition continued, and about a week later his mother took him to the Thomas Eye Group in Sandy Springs, where Dr. Jerry Berland diagnosed him with a likely allergy and prescribed a steroid.

Half of L.T.'s eye become red and swollen a week later, and Berland changed his medication and told him to come back in a few days. At the next appointment, Berland diagnosed him with iritis, an inflammation, and ordered a battery of tests.

L.T.'s condition deteriorated, and the inflammation spread throughout the eye. Berland consulted with colleague Jessica McCluskey, a retinal specialist who determined the teen likely had panuveitis, an inflammation of all the eye's layers in the uvea.

McCluskey transferred L.T.'s care to an Emory doctor, who said his condition might be an infection, endophthalmitis and ordered an injection of antibiotics into the eye.

Despite the treatment, L.T. suffered a detached retina that could not be reattached. His eye slowly atrophied, and he lost all use of it.

“He now wears a scleral shell, which is an ocular prosthesis that he wears over his existing blind and shrinking right eye,” the plaintiff's portion of the pretrial order said.

L.T.'s father, Lee Thomas, sued Berland, McCluskey and Thomas Eye Group in 2015 in Fulton County State Court. The complaint said that the doctors were negligent by failing to diagnose the infection until it was too late to save his son's eye.     

Monyak said the plaintiffs' sole demand was for “multiple millions” in insurance coverage the defendants carried, which was denied. There were no defense offers of settlement and no mediations, he said.

Trial began before Judge John Mather on April 9. Monyak said a key issue was whether L.T. actually had an infection.

“That could never be proved,” said Monyak. “Everyone agreed that for there to be an infection, there had to be some penetration of the eyeball. Our position was that he had a non-infectious form of inflammation.”

“The plaintiffs' theory was that there was some very tiny, self-sealing penetration from something very thin,” said Monyak. “But this would have been a through-and-through puncture in order to have caused an infection inside the eye.”

L.T. testified that he has multiple permanent complications from his injury.

“He has diminished depth perception; loss of peripheral vision, so collision sports are out; he can't see to the right when he's driving, and he has to wear glasses all the time to protect his good eye,” Monyak said.

Late in the afternoon of April 18, the jury returned a defense verdict.

Jurors did not stay to speak to the lawyers, but Monyak speculated they were influenced with the defendants' accounts.

“I would guess that the testimony of Dr. Berland and Dr. McCluskey, when they described what information they had about what happened in the yard, was probably most important to the jury,” he said.

“Given the length of time they were out, I don't think they had a lot of doubt about it,” he added.