Case Results
The minor plaintiff successfully underwent cardiac surgery at Children’s Memorial Hospital two weeks after birth for a small hole in his heart. However, the child experienced a respiratory arrest from congestion in his lungs and the surgical resident misplaced an endotracheal tube into the child’s stomach during emergency resuscitation.
The child suffered irreversible brain damage, requiring him to be tube fed for life.
The hospital pharmacy received an order for gentamicin to be filled for the plaintiff but misread the order and filled it at 10 times the dose prescribed. The drug is toxic to the ear and caused loss of balance. The plaintiff, age sixty-eight, was on kidney dialysis and in end-stage renal failure at the time of injury.
The plaintiff sued for the wrongful death of his wife, a fifty-three-year-old waitress, alleging a delay in diagnosis of breast cancer because the defendant internist chose not to recommend routine annual screening mammograms to her after her fiftieth birthday. The plaintiff argued that a routine screening mammogram would have likely detected her asymptomatic breast cancer two years earlier, when it was 95% curable with treatment.
A radiologist’s negligence caused a 16-month delay in diagnosis of lung cancer. Kurt Lloyd tried the case, winning a verdict from the jury – one of the few jury verdicts ever recorded on behalf of a plaintiff. This verdict is also noteworthy for being one of the first in Illinois to award more than one million dollars for the wrongful death of a widowed woman over the age of sixty-five.
As plaintiff’s counsel, Mr. Lloyd hired one of the world’s top lung cancer surgeons, who testified that a person with a malignant lung tumor less than 3.0 cm in size has a seventy percent chance of survival with timely diagnosis and treatment.
The minor plaintiff was born with a tracheal fistula in a suburban hospital and then transferred to Christ Hospital for surgical repair by pediatric surgeon Dr. Angel Bazuk. Dr. Bazuk performed three unsuccessful surgical attempts to repair the fistula, but in the process paralyzed the child’s vocal cords, causing her to suffer multiple hypoxic episodes in her sleep resulting in brain damage. Christ Hospital paid 10 million dollars towards the settlement for the negligence of Dr. Bazuk on an apparent agency theory.
The plaintiff’s mother was a member of a Chicago HMO when she became pregnant with baby Anthony. During the pregnancy, the mother developed gestational diabetes, a common complication, which went untreated. When the plaintiff’s mother was admitted to the hospital, Anthony was in fetal distress and, despite emergency cesarean section, he was born brain damaged. Plaintiff’s counsel successfully argued that the Chicago HMO’s primary care physician was required to review and approve the obstetrician’s care plan under the HMO guidelines.
Despite receiving copies of abnormally elevated blood sugar test results without any fetal monitoring or insulin treatment, the defendant primary care physician did not discuss the patient’s condition with the defendant obstetrician. This case represents the first Illinois jury verdict to hold the primary care physician responsible for the overall care of an obstetrical patient, despite a referral.
The plaintiff mother was admitted to Prentice Women’s Hospital at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for delivery of an uncomplicated pregnancy. When the mother began pushing efforts, the external fetal monitor began capturing the mother’s heart rate and not the baby’s heart rate. Plaintiff’s counsel argued that the delivery team should have checked the mother’s pulse rate and compared it to the heart rate seen on the monitor screen in between contractions. The obstetrician and nurse failed to do so, and the baby was born in severe distress. Despite resuscitation, the baby experienced cerebral palsy and related brain damage.
A hospital nurse transposed the numbers on a physician order, causing the patient to receive 5 times the recommended dose of a chemotherapy drug. The hospital’s nurses failed to cross-check the order against the label of the I.V. drug bag received from the Pharmacy Department. The plaintiff’s decedent was undergoing his last round of chemotherapy and had a prognosis for survival of ninety-five percent. This case was featured on ABC’s “20/20” television show.
Under a confidential settlement, the Defendant which was a national manufacturer of garbage truck container and compaction equipment had designed and manufactured a tailgate with an unguarded, exposed “slide shoe” assembly for the hydraulically powered compaction arm, all of which created a hazardous pinch-point for operators of the truck. In downstate Illinois, the Plaintiff had all toes of his right foot amputated while troubleshooting for a hydraulic leak.
Mr. Kucera enrolled in a weight loss program at Rush-Presbyterian Medical Center. Despite doing poorly on a treadmill stress test, the Medical Center sent the Mr. Kucera home, knowing he was scheduled for a vacation in Florida. Kucera suffered a fatal heart attack on a beach in Florida. His family sued Rush, for failing to consult a cardiologist after his stress-test, which likely would have resulted in his admission to the hospital, saving his life.
A woman pedestrian who was a curator for the Chicago Art Institute was walking outside the crosswalk and struck by an SYSCO Foods delivery truck which was turning during heavy rush-hour traffic, causing a complicated fracture in the lower leg.
The Plaintiff who was a front seat passenger in a Ford Box Truck suffered severe hip and knee injuries when his vehicle was rear-ended while stopped in a construction zone by the driver of a semi-tractor and attached trailer.
The plaintiff, a single, forty-year-old health care consultant, was a backseat passenger in an automobile involved in a head-on collision. She sustained a C-2 through C-4 neck fractures requiring several spinal fusions and a mild closed head injury. The plaintiff claimed that the head injury caused her to be unable to perform complex tasks in the management of her health care staff. The Plaintiff claimed that the neck fracture would require several future spine surgeries.
The mother’s family sued for wrongful death from a rare necrotizing fasciitis infection to her episiotomy wound, which was contracted at the time of delivery. The defendant obstetrician repaired the wound and ordered a narcotic medication for pain in the mother’s wound site. Despite continued pain and an increased white blood cell count two days after delivery, the obstetrician and nursing staff discharged the mother home.
The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd alleged that the defendants missed signs and symptoms of an evolving infection, and he retained an obstetrical expert with a specialty in maternal infections who testified to the negligence of the defendants proving that, even though the death rate for this infection was 70%, the mother should have survived with timely, appropriate treatment.
Estate of Moore v. Wrona, M.D. and St. Joseph’s Medical Center
The plaintiff parents sued for the wrongful death of their newborn son, who had died from herpes viral encephalopathy, which was contracted at birth. At birth, the defendant obstetrician and hospital nurses each failed to advise Stephen’s pediatrician in the newborn nursery that his mother had a history of herpes infection, so that he could be examined and tested for signs and symptoms of herpes infection. In a newborn, the herpes virus can attack the central nervous system and destroy it, because the infant has no immunity to the virus during the first month of life. The drug Acyclovir, if given as a precaution, can halt the attack of the virus on the baby’s nervous system. Stephen was stricken with the virus and lived in a vegetative state for twenty months before he died.
Although the defense claimed lack of evidence of an active herpes lesion in the mother during labor and delivery, the plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd was able to show a 25% rate of asymptomatic viral shedding in mothers who had any history of the disease.
Estate of Davis v. Toig, M.D. and Northwestern Memorial Hospital
The plaintiff mother gave vaginal birth to a healthy baby boy and experienced an unrecognized fourth degree tear to her rectal sphincter muscle that was not properly repaired after delivery. After her discharge home, she developed an infection which evolved into life-threatening sepsis and necrosis. This infection left the plaintiff with partial rectal incontinence and scarring to her vaginal area.
These types of wounds at delivery and their subsequent infection are defended as a recognized complication of delivery. However, the plaintiff’s attorney, Kurt Lloyd, successfully proved that the defendant family practitioner, performed an incomplete surgical repair of her tear after delivery, which allowed her wound to become infected.
Jacobs v. Kobler, M.D.
The minor plaintiff sued her obstetrical group alleging that three days after her due date, the mother thought she was experiencing decreased fetal movement, so she went to the hospital outpatient center. The mother underwent a non-stress test (NST), which measures fetal heart rate activity and oxygenation while not in labor, and he NST results demonstrated a one-minute fetal heart rate deceleration indicating that the baby likely had low amniotic fluid causing umbilical cord compression and reduced oxygenation. The defendant obstetrician on duty did not read as concerning or order an amniotic fluid index(AFI) and sent her home. At the mother’s next prenatal visit, another obstetrician did not repeat the NST or obtain an AFI. A few days later, the minor plaintiff was born in fetal distress and suffered irreversible brain damage.
The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd hired leading experts on the subject of antenatal testing to prove negligence.
Wright v. Anderson, M.D., et al.
The minor plaintiff alleged that he suffered an Erb’s palsy as a result of excessive traction after shoulder dystocia occurred in a term delivery. $950,000 cash and waiver of $250,000 Public Aid lien. Mr. Lloyd has prosecuted a number of surgery cases.
The plaintiff’s decedent, age 23, had surgery to remove an abdominal abscess. After surgery, she developed swelling in both legs. The defendant hospital’s surgeons ordered a PRG, a non-invasive vascular test, which is used to rule out blood clots in the legs as a cause of the swelling. The PRG results were interpreted as negative, and the surgeons then assumed her swelling was caused by excess “third spacing” of fluid. The next day, the plaintiff’s decedent was found in cardiac arrest on the floor of her room. Despite resuscitation, she suffered brain damage and lived in a vegetative state for some time before she died.
The prior plaintiff’s attorneys had voluntarily dismissed the case because more than a dozen expert witnesses had determined the cause of arrest was unknown. The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd was asked to investigate the case. After investigation and re-filing the case, attorney Lloyd retained and disclosed the vascular surgeon who had invented the PRG test and who then testified that it had been misinterpreted as negative. Attorney Lloyd proved that a vascular test had, in fact, demonstrated a blood clot in the patient’s pelvic veins, near the site of her original surgery, which had dislodged and embolized to her heart causing cardiac arrest before the clot was ejected into her lung.
Estate of Morris v. University of Chicago Hospitals
The Plaintiff had been diagnosed with a benign meningioma in the brain. During surgery, the defendant neurosurgeon over manipulated the tumor, causing the plaintiff to suffer an intraoperative stroke and leaving him partially hemiplegic. This case was turned down by seven other Plaintiff’s lawyers.
Crane v. Luken, M.D.
The plaintiff, age 60, was a part-time bricklayer who had a carpal tunnel release surgery during which the defendant neurosurgeon cut a nerve in the wrist resulting in reflex sympathetic dystrophy in the patient’s hand. The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd investigated and hired a hand surgeon taught carpel tunnel release surgery and had published a leading textbook on hand surgery.
Weiner v. Pedersen, M.D.
The plaintiff, age 44, underwent laser spine surgery to her low back for a bulging disc and right posterior leg pain which resulted in a new neuropathic pain syndrome. The plaintiff attorney Kurt Lloyd alleged that defendant Lakeshore Surgery Center negligently granted surgical privileges to an orthopedic surgeon to perform laser spine disc decompression surgery at an Ambulatory Surgery Center, when the surgeon did not hold hospital equivalent privileges or current credentialing for laser spine surgery.
The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd found and retained the orthopedic surgeon who had perfected the laser spine procedure and trained the majority of orthopedic surgeons in laser spine surgery techniques.
Tsakonas v. Lakeshore Surgery Center, et al.
The plaintiff’s estate sued the defendant surgeon for the failure to timely perform an exploratory abdominal surgery to determine the cause of the morbidly obese patient’s diarrhea, cramping, and lower abdominal pain for the past three days. The defendant claimed he could not obtain an abdominal CT scan because the patient weighed 350 pounds, making him too large for an abdominal CT-scan. The patient died of peritonitis, which had resulted from a delayed diagnosis and repair of a perforated bowel.
Estate of Lucas v. Roper, M.D.
The plaintiff, age 61, who was a part-time artist, underwent endoscopic sinus surgery (FESS procedure) for chronic maxillary sinus infections and headaches. During surgery, the defendant ENT surgeon penetrated the orbit bone of the right eye above the maxillary sinus, causing double vision. The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd alleged that because orbital penetration is a recognized complication, the surgeon should have ordered a post-operative CT-Scan which would have discovered the orbital bleeding and then steroid treatment would have prevented the scarring to the eye muscles and resulting double vision. No medical expense damages were presented.
The Ross v. Lee, MD
The Plaintiff, age 73 and obese, underwent hip replacement surgery and was then transferred to the defendant nursing facility for rehabilitation. In the middle of the night, the defendant’s bedside nurses pulled the plaintiff up in bed causing “shearing” injury to his right buttock, because of delayed wound care, progressed to Stage III infected wound and nine-month delay in hip rehabilitation.
Jaffe v. Lexington Health Care
The plaintiff, age 41, who was an elementary school teacher, saw an internist for a sudden headache and dizziness which she had experienced that day while shoveling snow. The defendant internist assumed that she had the flu and sent her home on bed rest and fluids. Five days later, the plaintiff began to slur her speech and drop things that she held in her right hand.
She was admitted to the hospital and found to have a ruptured cerebral aneurysm, which had likely burst while shoveling snow. After surgery, she experienced a vasospasm from the delay in treatment, causing a stroke. The plaintiff has partial right-sided paralysis and inability to speak.
This case represents the largest Illinois settlement for the delay in diagnosis of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. The parties agreed to a nondisclosure of the identities of the defendants as a term of the settlement.
Sea v. Undisclosed Medical Clinic and Physician
The plaintiff underwent endoscopic esophageal fundoplication surgery (“wrap procedure”) to treat intractable acid reflux disease, GERD, which failed to cause a permanent malpositioning of the stomach in the patient’s chest. The prior plaintiff’s attorneys voluntarily dismissed the original case because unable to find a qualified surgical expert. The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd hired a nationally recognized biliary surgeon and re-filed the case alleging the defendant surgeon’s improper intraoperative technique and suturing which caused the wrap to fail.
Barbara Jackson, a disabled person v. Westlake Hospital
The deceased plaintiff, age 65 and obese, was admitted for hernia surgery. The defendant hospital nursing staff did not follow procedures for pre-operative and post-operative assessment of the plaintiff decedent’s for risk of venous thromboembolism (‘blood clots”) and notify physicians, which resulted in a delay in anticoagulation therapy to prevent pulmonary embolism. The plaintiff died one day after discharge home from a large saddle pulmonary embolism. The plaintiff had a history of Stage III colon cancer with the risk of recurrence at the time of death.
Mr. Lloyd has prosecuted a number of failures to diagnose cancer cases in the areas of breast, lung, prostate, and skin.
Estate of Thomas, deceased v. Advocate Christ Hospital and Medical Center
The plaintiff husband sued for the wrongful death of his wife, a forty-one-year-old homemaker and mother of his seven-year-old daughter, alleging that she had died because the defendant gynecologist did not recommend and obtain a baseline screening mammogram before age 40. In February, the patient saw the defendant for a routine check-up and her breast examination was negative. In September, she saw an internist for heartburn who ordered a mammogram which detected a 3.0 cm malignant breast mass. Despite a radical mastectomy which revealed four positive lymph nodes, she died one year later.
The plaintiff’s counsel argued that a baseline screening mammogram at age 40 would have likely detected her asymptomatic breast cancer one to two years earlier when she could have been cured with diagnosis and treatment.
Estate of Baierle v. Matviuw, M.D.
The plaintiff, age 50, had a PSA test result which was elevated to 7.0, but the defendant physician did not repeat the test or order a follow-up examination. Two years later, the plaintiff was diagnosed with a Gleason’s 8 rated prostate tumor with a diminished life expectancy.
Morris v. Ajmere, M.D.
The plaintiff’s mother filed a wrongful death case against a defendant oral surgeon for the loss of her twenty-year-old daughter who died from a cardio-respiratory arrest in the office after extraction of a wisdom tooth under anesthesia. The plaintiff’s attorney Kurt Lloyd alleged that the oral surgeon terminated recovery room monitoring before the patient had sufficiently awakened from conscious sedation. This case has resulted in more vigilant monitoring of anesthesia patients in dental offices.
Estate of Barksdale v. Horowitz, D.D.S.
The Plaintiff, age 65 and retired, a previous minimum wage factory worker, underwent a tooth extraction in the defendant’s office under a 10-minute general anesthetic during which she stopped breathing as a result of failure to properly monitor. Despite resuscitation in less than 2-minutes, the Plaintiff alleged diffuse organic brain damage, which was not detectable on MRI scan.
Hicks v. Wonderlick, D.D.S.
A family brought an underinsured motorist claim against CNA Insurance for the wrongful death of their fourteen-year-old daughter who had been a passenger in a one-auto crash. Their daughter was a freshman in high school without any income. The death occurred shortly after the Illinois General Assembly had passed into law in l996 a new wrongful death limit of $500,000 for non-economic damage awards.
This is the only reported case to settle in excess of the limit before the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the limit as unconstitutional.
Baries v. CNA Insurance Co.
The plaintiff, a third year law student who was riding his bicycle to school, attempted to cross Dearborn Street from Delaware Street on the corner where the Park Newberry high rise building was being constructed. While stopped inside a construction sidewalk canopy within the Dearborn street crosswalk, the plaintiff looked for oncoming traffic and thought it was clear. As he entered into the moving lane, he was struck by an oncoming taxicab, ejecting him from his bicycle and rendering him a wheelchair-bound, paraplegic.
The plaintiff alleged that the placement of the construction canopy created a sightline traffic blind spot for users of the crosswalk. Using traffic-engineering standards and computer-simulated models of the intersection, the plaintiff’s Kurt Lloyd demonstrated that the canopy interfered with the minimum sight line distance for a bicyclist to see and react to an oncoming vehicle or for an oncoming vehicle driver to see and react in a reasonable stopping time to an emerging pedestrian/bicyclist.
Hallsten v. City of Chicago, et al.
The plaintiff, age 42, was working as a part-time secretary in a commercial office building when she existed the rear door to the office building, slipped and fell on the concrete stoop and fractured her right heel. Plaintiff alleged that the stoop had an excessive slope in violation of building codes making it hazardous. The Plaintiff who was a diabetic developed a degenerative called “Charcot’s foot” from the traumatic fracture, which later resulted in amputation of her foot above the ankle.
Hruby v. FCB, Ltd.
A sixty-year-old woman who was survived by two adult children was one of twelve passengers on a Dodge Model B3500 Wag “cargo van.” The vehicle traveling southbound on I 55 rolled over and crashed in a snow storm, killing all passengers and the driver. The plaintiff’s estate alleged that the vehicle when near capacity became unstable as a result of a high center of gravity and caused the vehicle to “yaw.”
The plaintiff’s counsel using reconstruction engineers and design engineers was able to show that the “yaw” pattern had occurred immediately before the crash.
The Taylor estate obtained the largest individual settlement of all plaintiffs.
Estate of Taylor v. Chrysler Motor Co.
The plaintiff’s mother was mowing the lawn with an International Harvester “Cadet” 85 Special, a rear-engine riding lawn mower which was manufactured in l975. After the mower became stuck along the fence, the mother got off her seat without disengaging the manual blade control lever and attempted to move the machine. The plaintiff, a two-year-old boy who had been inside the screened porch, unexpectedly opened the door and wandered into the lawn in front of the mower at the same moment that the mower became dislodged. The mower traveled a few feet before knocking the toddler to the ground and mutilating his left foot and ankle. The plaintiff alleged that the mower product should have been equipped with a selective “Deadman” safety seat, which causes the engine to automatically kill if the operator leaves the seat without remembering to disengage the manual blade lever. The plaintiff’s counsel found industry research that showed that the primary injury to bystanders and riding mower operators was blade contact while the operator was off the seat. The plaintiff’s counsel deposed the chief engineers from two industry competitors, who testified that a Deadman safety device design was available and used by three competitors in industry. The plaintiff’s counsel found three facsimiles of Defendant’s mower product and had one re-engineered and built with a Deadman safety seat device that eliminated the danger. This case was the largest settlement from hundreds of cases involving power riding lawn mower accidents and lack of Deadman safety seat switches, and is now an industry safety standard. Read On
Morgan v. International Harvester Co., nka Navistar
The defendant Straight Line Water Sports began marketing a new water ski rope device called the “Woggle,” which was manufactured in Hong Kong by an injection mold plastic process. The woggle was intended as a quick release device to connect and disconnect tow-ropes to water ski handles and inner tubes. The plaintiff, a sixteen-year-old woman, was being towed behind her father’s boat on an inner tube when the woggle device shattered, causing the tow-rope to snap back and strike the plaintiff in her eye. The blunt trauma blinded the plaintiff in one eye.
The woggle device which broke sank to the bottom of the Illinois River. The plaintiff alleged that the woggle device had a propensity to fracture under load based on a design defect in the ejection mold system. Using a plastics engineer who tested dozens of facsimile woggles, plaintiff’s counsel proved that the injected mold had improperly placed gates, which produced air bubbles causing weakness in the woggle. This is a rare case of reverse engineering used to prove a defect when the injury-causing product is no longer available for testing or examination.
Robertson v. Straight Line Water Sports, et al.
The defendant Victoria’s Secret, a subsidiary of The Limited, entered the body and skin care products market in l995 and sold a product labeled “Pear Glacé Moisturizing Body Splash.” The product was its number one selling cosmetic product. Victoria’s Secret’s Marketing Department designed the label and marketed it as a moisturizer, despite the product’s primary ingredient being SD Alcohol 40 which is highly flammable. The plaintiff, who was a twenty-year-old African American female, followed the instruction on the label and claimed did not realize it was flammable. She applied the product liberally, as instructed, to her arms, chest and neck, while dressing in the bathroom with the door closed. After she put on her blouse, she lit a cigarette, causing ignition and a blue flame. She suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns to eleven percent of her body. The defendant re-labeled the product post-accident to say “flammable—keep away from heat or open flame” and dropped the word “moisturizing.” The plaintiff’s counsel argued that the product was misbranded as a skincare product under FDA guidelines and that, although the product had a scented fragrance, the average woman would not assume it was perfume product which are known to be inherently flammable. Research of competitive market products, such as “Jean Nate Body Splash,” revealed that body splashes carried a warning regarding flammability.
Frazier v. The Limited, Inc
ADDITIONAL INJURY MATTERS
Valet driver for Hyatt Corporation while exiting garage with guest’s vehicle struck a woman pedestrian crossing mid-block on Ohio Street causing compression fracture in lumbar spine.
A rideshare driver missed his turn to pick-up his passenger. Then, attempting to go around the block, he made an improper lane change side-striking a college student driving his motorcycle at the foot pedal and causing foot fractures.
Defendant driver failed to yield and pulled out in front of firefighter riding his motorcycle resulting in his motorcycle “T boning” collision the defendant’s vehicle and causing chronic low back pain.
Panel Truck driver rear-ended vehicle driven by 67-year-old man causing neck pain.
(Policy limits)
Legal secretary driving to work rear-ended vehicle of young male driver while on Lakeshore Drive causing a labrum tear to his shoulder and requiring surgery.
Young mother of two was on travelling on I-55 at rush hour when her vehicle was rear-ended by semi-truck causing neck pain despite negative MRI imaging
Driver of borrowed vehicle failed to yield at “T” intersection striking vehicle driven by radiology equipment repairman and causing tendon injury to his thumb.
(Policy limits)
Plastic surgeon performed “tummy-tuck” on diabetic, 68-year-old woman without obtaining pre-op protein lab results which would have shown poor tissue healing, all of which resulted in wound breakdown, infection and ultimately death.
Podiatrist applied excessive traction during ankle surgery causing tibial nerve damage and chronic pain to patient’s large toe.
A podiatrist performed surgery for a hammer toe condition to the patient’s great toe which failed causing chronic pain in the toe.
Surgeon misdiagnosed a benign thyroid lesion as “suspicious” and performed unnecessary surgery causing thyroid function derangements.
Defendant podiatrist performed improper hammertoe correction surgery causing need for repeat surgery.
While a patient of the nursing home, a disabled woman developed a bedsore from inadequate nursing care.
A 29-year-old temporary worker injured his hand in a machine at work.
A 49-year-old woman struck by a bus fractured her ribs and pelvis.
A 40-year-old laborer fell from a ladder.
A 30-year-old woman struck by a cab on Lake Shore Drive fractured her right leg.
A 41-year-old truck driver slipped on ice at a freight terminal, injuring his back and knee.
A 51-year-old police officer fell down the stairs, injuring his back.
49-year-old fell at work, tearing a rotator cuff.
A 50-year-old woman in an auto accident fractured her leg, among other injuries.
A 50-year-old woman was rear-ended in traffic with no damage to either vehicle.
A 61-year-old man in an auto accident injured his knee and shoulder.
A 52-year-old woman slipped at a fast-food restaurant, fracturing her thumb and wrist.
A 33-year-old man fell from a porch, fracturing his ankle.
An 80-year-old woman slipped on a wet floor at the hospital, fracturing her leg.