Alexandria, Virginia Jury awards over $1.8 Million Dollars for inferior alveolar nerve injury

On January 3, 2013, the defendant oral surgeon undertook to perform an extraction of an impacted first molar, along with remaining wisdom teeth. At age 32, the patient was already old for the procedure, and was asymptomatic, but he had been advised by his general dentist to have an oral surgery consultation on three separate occasions. The procedure was high risk due to the patient’s age and contraindicated due to the intimate proximity of the first molar tooth root to the inferior alveolar nerve. In trying to extract the roots of the first molar, the oral surgeon caused a traumatic tear injury to the inferior alveolar nerve. The patient suffers from a disabling traumatic trigeminal neuropathy with significant allodynia requiring 23 pills/day to knock his pain level down from 10/10 to 7/10. He has tried everything to be cured of his injury, including neurrorhaphy, attempted implantation of a nerve stimulator and a brain surgery, but nothing has helped. Despite all this, he has a wonderful attitude and made a fantastic and deserving witness. His past medical bills were approximately $309,000 and future medical expenses projected to be approximately $1.2M. The jury deliberated more than nine hours over two days before returning a verdict for plaintiff of $1,879,721.00 (One million eight hundred seventy-nine thousand seven hundred and twenty-one dollars). Before trial, we tried to settle the case at mediation, but the oral surgeon’s insurance company only offered $125,000.