Lawsuit: Botched Diagnosis Led to 30-Year-Old New York Teacher's Brain Hemorrhage Death

Legal Events

Doctors at a Long Island hospital failed to properly diagnose a 30-year-old Queens teacher's head pain in the days leading up to her death from a brain hemorrhage, a lawsuit alleges.

Melissa Fudge, who taught at PS 16 in Corona, died a year ago tomorrow. She had a history of ulcerative colitis when she was admitted to Long Island Jewish/Plainview Hospital in November 2008 complaining of vomiting and gastrointestinal pain accompanied by a searing headache and shooting pain in her left eye.

Doctors treated her for colitis, but her head pain continued, said her lawyer, Gerard Lucciola.

"They kept giving her transfusions and couldn't understand where all the blood was going," said her husband, Roger Fudge Jr. "They got tunnel-visioned on the colitis."

And, he said, the tragedy had far-reaching effects.

"It wasn't only me; it was my family, her family — her students, too," he said.

The suit, filed last week in Queens Supreme Court, seeks unspecified damages from the hospital and three doctors.

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Does a car or truck accident count as a work injury?

If an employee is injured in a car crash while on the job, they are eligible to receive workers’ compensation benefits. “On the job” injuries are not limited to accidents and injuries that happen inside the workplace, they may also include injuries suffered away from an employee’s place of work while performing a job-related task, such as making a delivery or traveling to a client meeting.

Regular commutes to and from work don’t usually count. If you get into an accident on your way in on a regular workday, it’s probably not considered a work injury for the purposes of workers’ compensation.

If you drive around as part of your job, an injury on the road or loading/unloading accident is likely a work injury. If you don’t typically drive around for work but are required to drive for the benefit of your employer, that would be a work injury in many cases. If you are out of town for work, pretty much any driving would count as work related. For traveling employees, any accidents or injuries that happen on a work trip, even while not technically working, can be considered a work injury. The reason is because you wouldn’t be in that town in the first place, had you not been on a work trip.

Workers’ compensation claims for truck drivers, traveling employees and work-related injuries that occur away from the job site can be challenging and complex. At Krol, Bongiorno & Given, we understand that many families depend on the income of an injured worker, and we are proud of our record protecting the injured and disabled. We have handled well over 30,000 claims for injured workers throughout the state of Illinois.

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