Physician's estate sues other doctors over his death

CHARLESTON - A man in charge of the estate of his deceased father, a Kanawha County doctor, has filed a suit against the physicians who treated his father before he died.

William E. Gibson filed a suit Nov. 14 in Kanawha Circuit Court on behalf of the estate of Robert E. Gibson. Doctors Leon Shiu-Lung Kwei and Piayon Emmanual Kobbah are named as defendants. Both doctors practice emergency medicine.

According to the suit, Robert Gibson went to the emergency room at Charleston Area Medical Center on Sept. 28, 2006. Gibson had complaints of sudden onsets of severe left-sided abdominal pain radiating to the groin and back with associated nausea and shortness of breath.

Kwei and Kobbah treated Gibson. A CT scan was ordered and Gibson was sent home with instructions to follow up with his family doctor in two to three days.

According to the suit, there was no follow up with the CT scan until the next day, at which time it was read to show a leaking aneurysm.

"Unfortunately, also the next day, early in the morning, Dr. Gibson was found dead," the suit says. "His cause of death was listed as a ruptured thoracic aortic aneurism."

According to the suit, Kwei and Kobbah were negligent by discharging Gibson without reading the CT scan, which ultimately revealed a leaking aneurysm from which Gibson died, by failing to admit him to the hospital and other failures.

William Gibson, on behalf of his father's estate, seeks compensatory and punitive damages.

Attorney Richard D. Lindsay, also a medical doctor, is representing Gibson. The case has been assigned to Judge Charles King.

Kanawha Circuit Court case number 07-C-2461