A federal judge in Atlanta has awarded $8.7 million to the family of a Vietnam War veteran who died due to “grievous malpractice” at the Atlanta VA Medical Center following a surgery in 2016.
A nurse at the hospital wrongly placed a feeding tube into Jesse James Anderson’s windpipe, causing him to suffocate and lose consciousness, the judge said. Anderson, 70, died two days later when his life support was withdrawn.
In an order on Monday, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg said the nurse was pressured by a doctor to insert the feeding tube, though she hadn’t been trained in the procedure and had never done it before. Totenberg said the VA’s “grossly flawed medical care” made Anderson’s final minutes of consciousness “terrifying.”…