Woman wins lawsuit after botched surgery

A Shanghai court ordered a hospital to pay 410,000 yuan ($65,559) in compensation to a 48-year-old patient who suffered nerve damage during surgery to remove her uterus, local media reported Sunday.

The dispute began in 2009, when the plaintiff, whom the court called Wang Ping, went to the hospital to have a birth control device removed from her uterus, according to a report in the Shanghai Evening Post. Wang suffered bleeding following the procedure and had to have her uterus removed the following year.

After the second procedure, Wang suffered from back pain, numbness in her right leg and urinary incontinence so severe that she lost her job.

Wang blamed the hospital for her injury and sought compensation. The hospital blamed the injury on the fact that individuals have different reactions to the anesthesia and offered her a settlement of no more than 60,000 yuan.

With the help of a legal aid service, Wang filed a lawsuit against the hospital, which was not named.

The hospital argued that doctors did not make a mistake during the surgery. It provided an evaluation by a city-level medical association that determined that Wang had suffered from bleeding before the birth control device was removed.

Wang's lawyers, however, made the case that the bleeding didn't start until after the first procedure. They argued that Wang could have avoided the injury if the hospital had examined her more carefully before removing her uterus.

After looking at a second legal evaluation, the court ruled that the hospital should take most of the responsibility for Wang's injury.