FORT WORTH, Texas, April 1 (UPI) -- A medical malpractice attorney says he is forging ahead with a lawsuit on behalf of a U.S. Air Force veteran despite the military's immunity to civil suits.
Lawyer Darrell Keith said the landmark Feres Doctrine is outdated and unfair to troops such as his client who suffer due to negligence or incompetence on the part of the military.
Keith is suing the government on behalf of former Airman Colton Read, whose routine gallbladder surgery cost him his legs when the surgeons tore an artery and then failed to act promptly to find and fix the problem.
"I am championing Colton's … cause to overturn the extremely unjust, outmoded, universally criticized, and judicially erroneous Feres Doctrine so that not only the Reads but all our nation's active-duty military personnel will have the right to seek just redress for harm inflicted on them by federal governmental doctors and healthcare providers," Keith told the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram.
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Read, 23, of New Braunfels, Texas, lost nearly two-thirds of his blood internally before the aortic tear was discovered and repaired. Keith alleges the tear was made by a surgical resident at Travis Air Force Base in California and went undetected until he was moved to a civilian hospital nine hours later.
The Star-Telegram said Keith could face an uphill battle in prevailing against the Feres Doctrine, which was established in the 1950s. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the doctrine in 1987 and last week refused to hear the appeal of another airman whose appendectomy surgery was allegedly botched at the same base hospital where Read was treated.
