UNF professor's survivors win $6.2 million medmal verdict against Hospital

An Alachua County jury returned a $6.2 million medical malpractice verdict Wednesday against Shands at the University of Florida hospital in Gainesville in favor of the survivors of a University of North Florida Business School professor who died there during a CT scan in 2002.

According to the family's attorney, Frank Ashton of Hardesty, Tyde, Green & Ashton in Jacksonville, Professor Cory Fine was 41 when he went to Shands Gainesville to undergo gastric bypass surgery for weight loss in December 2002. The operation was uneventful.

But five days after the surgery, Fine developed breathing difficulties. Ashton said he was sent without medical monitoring to undergo a CT scan of his lungs. Even though Fine told the CT technicians that he would have difficulty breathing if lying down, they elected to strap him down flat to the CT table for several minutes in preparation for the exam, Ashton said.

Fine was then put into the CT machine for the scan and died during the procedure.

He is survived by his wife, Lisa, and his 10-year-old son.