Student forced to attend prom in wheelchair awarded $1.2M in malpractice case

A Livingston High School student who suffered nerve damage during a biopsy to her leg and was forced to attend her prom in a wheelchair has been awarded a $1.2 million by a jury in her medical malpractice lawsuit, her lawyer said.

Samantha Alpert, now 22, had been an all-star tennis player at Livingston High School before seeing orthopedic surgen Dr. Steven Robbins about a benign bone growth, known as osteochondroma, in her left leg, said her lawyer Bruce Nagel said.

During a surgical biopsy of the growth on June 5, 2013, Robbins cut a nerve in Alpert’s leg, Nagel said. The damage forced her to use a wheelchair and undergo months of physical therapy to regain the ability to walk, Nagel said. She attended both her senior prom and high school graduation ceremony in the wheelchair, he said.

Alpert has since had the growth removed by another doctor, but continues to have numbness and pain in her leg that is expected to continue throughout her life, Nagel said. She can no longer play tennis.

Nagel called the biopsy an “unnecessary surgery,” that he argued could have been combined with the removal as the growth, not done as a separate procedure.

A jury awarded the $1.2 million verdict and found that Robbins did not fully inform Alpert’s parents of the other treatment options, Nagel said.

Nagel said Alpert graduated from the University of Southern California this spring with a degree in fine arts, and is now working in New York as an assistant at a modeling agency.

“What Dr. Robbins did was inexcusable and he permanently injured Samantha,” Nagel said. “We are grateful the jury held him accountable for his substandard medical care.”

Thanks to Jessica Mazzola may be reached at jmazzola@njadvancemedia.com.