The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Dr. Patrick Zimmermann. He gets the award for the following.

EDWARDSVILLE -- A jury sided with a doctor Tuesday in a $10.9 million
medical malpractice case brought by the family of a Glen Carbon woman who died of
cancer after the doctor removed a mole without testing it.

Maria Storm had a mole taken off her back by Dr. Patrick Zimmermann in 1999.
She and her husband filed a lawsuit in 2003 claiming that Zimmermann should
have caught the malignant melanoma that ultimately killed her in 2005 after the
cancer spread to her liver and brain.

The jury took about four hours to decide in Zimmermann's favor. None of the
people involved in the case nor their lawyers could be reached afterward
for comment.

A prominent Collinsville family doctor, Zimmermann contended that he had no
reason to suspect the mole was cancerous; he, his attorney and experts
called in his defense sought to cast doubt that a biopsy of the mole would have
found any cancer.

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Storm had previously had a mole removed in 1998, but it grew back. Zimmermann treated her only once, removing the second mole. He did not send the tissue to a laboratory for testing.

East St. Louis attorney Rex Carr, who represents Storm's husband, Douglas, and estate, has 30 days to appeal the jury's verdict. He had argued that had Zimmermann tested the mole, Storm's melanoma would have been discovered and
could have been treated.

Zimmermann testified that he had removed thousands of moles and sent hundreds for testing. He estimated that only 1 percent ever turned up a melanoma.

The Doctor apparently has never heard of better safe than sorry. For the sake of $200 biopsy and a little bit of the doctor's time, Maria Storm may be alive today. Total medical incompetence and a jury was too blind or dumb to see otherwise. Dr. Patrick Zimmerman may have dodged a malpractice verdict, but he doesn't dodge being today's Knucklehead of the Day.

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