Wednesday, May 26, 1999 | 11:26 a.m.
A typographical error in her medical record left Barbara Cleveland in constant pain since 1993, she says, and now she wants a Las Vegas jury to force the doctor she says is responsible to pay for that pain.
The trial of Cleveland's civil lawsuit against Dr. Albert Capanna, former chief of neurosurgery at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center and later its chief of staff, and internist Dr. William Gramlich began Tuesday in District Court.
The trial could serve as a sounding board for critics of health maintenance organizations. Health Plan of Nevada, Cleveland's insurer, would not approve the doctor she wanted to perform the surgery because he was not on the list of health care providers, her lawyer told jurors. The HMO instead sent her to Capanna.
And now, attorney Thomas Mehesan told jurors, Cleveland has not been able to find a doctor the HMO will approve to do corrective surgery.
Gramlich made an error on the chart on which Capanna relied for the surgery July 5, 1993, at Sunrise Hospital, Mehesan said in his opening statements. The "typographical error," he said, instructed the surgeon to operate on the wrong vertebra.
Capanna, a longtime ringside fight doctor for the Nevada Athletic Commission, has had at least one prior high-profile malpractice suit that involved the death of a child.
In March 1998 Capanna and other medical officials settled a suit with the parents of an infant who in two months underwent 11 surgeries at Sunrise in 1992, only to die four years later. The parents of Erik Dailey -- Elizabeth and Kevin Dailey -- received $7.4 million, $3.5 million of which was paid by Capanna and his insurers.
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