CLARKSBURG — Another lawsuit was filed against the Clarksburg Veteran Affairs Medical Center in federal court last week involving the unusually high death rate of patients on one of its floors in 2018.
James Forrest Kozul filed the lawsuit against the federal government, which is over the VAMC, for the death of his father, Robert Lee Kozul Sr. in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia on July 22.
Robert Kozul was admitted to the VA through the emergency department on Jan. 18, 2018, after he had fallen at home and was discharged three days later. He was then readmitted on Jan. 26, 2018, for vision loss and an MRI of his brain confirmed he'd had a stroke.
Robert Kozul was not a diabetic, nor was insulin prescribed for him and his routine glucose testing was within normal range results, according to the suit.
Reta Mays was assigned to Robert Kozul during the early morning hours of Jan. 29, 2018, and by 3 a.m. he was cold, clammy, lethargic, was tachycardic and was transferred to the critical care unit where a plasma draw found that his glucose level was 27 and Dr. Clara Wang-Liang ordered him dextrose, which was not successful in stabilizing or maintaining his glucose, according to the suit.
Another physician, Dr. Jaclyn Gabriel, also noted the marked decline in Robert Kozul's health from the previous day and no physicians investigated the cause of the unexplained hypoglycemia, according to the suit, and Robert Kozul died at 1 a.m. on Jan. 30.
James Kozul claims that the lack of medical investigation into the cause of Robert Kozul's death was a deviation from the standard of medical care.
"Because Mr. Kozul’s family was not advised of the sudden and unexplained nature of Mr. Kozul’s hypoglycemic event, all the prior similar events occurring on Floor 3A, all the other unexpected and undetermined patient declines and/or deaths, and that Mr. Kozul’s change in condition and death was considered an Adverse Event and a Sentinel Event, no autopsy was performed or demanded at the time of death," the complaint states.
In September 2019, Robert Kozul’s body was disinterred and an autopsy was performed at Dover Air Force Base, and an investigation was performed by an expert endocrinology consultant for the federal government. The expert consultant concluded Robert Kozul’s hypoglycemic event was caused by the administration of exogenous insulin.
The Dover Air Force Base Medical Examiner issued an amended autopsy report on April 24, and for the first time declared Robert Kozul’s death was caused by exogenous insulin administration while he was hospitalized at the VAMC.
James Kozul is seeking compensatory damages. He is represented by Tony L. O'Dell and Cheryl A. Fisher of Tiano O'Dell in Charleston.
Mays, 45, pleaded guilty earlier this month to second-degree murder in seven patients' deaths at the VAMC. The prosecutors on Mays' case argued that she had administered fatal doses of insulin to the veterans even though they had not been prescribed it.
O'Dell said his clients were pleased to hear of Mays pleading guilty to the charges.
“The families I represent are all very pleased with the resolution of the criminal charges against Reta Mays," O'Dell said in an interview with The West Virginia Record. "However, proper accountability does not stop there. The VA hospital in Clarksburg had a frightening number of system failures that allowed this person to kill as many people as she did."
O'Dell said the families deserve nothing short of accountability.
"The fact that these related deaths continued to pile up shows a complete lack of competence and a total lack of human caring," O'Dell said. "For the VA to claim that unnaturally, extremely low blood sugars in mostly non-diabetics were somehow not a red flag that needed to be investigated from the very start is simply beyond rational belief. The victims’ will march on to get answers and accountability in the civil lawsuits. These families and West Virginia’s veterans deserve nothing less."
Another lawsuit was also filed recently against the VAMC by the family of a veteran that died. That case involves Archie Edgell, who was diabetic but his medications had been stopped. Dino Colombo, Edgell's family's attorney, said to Metro News that after Edgell died he was found to have four separate injection sites where Mays had injected him with insulin.