Garrison, Levin-Epstein, Fitzgerald & Pirrotti, P.C. Partners Stephen Fitzgerald and Joshua Goodbaum obtained a $1,804,454.80 jury verdict against Hartford Healthcare Medical Group on behalf of their client Dr. Paul Preissler, a heart surgeon in the Waterbury area.
A jury of six Connecticut citizens deliberated for approximately four hours before finding for Preissler on his legal claims of breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing against his former employer, Hartford Healthcare Medical Group.
“We are pleased that the jury saw there should be consequences for Hartford Healthcare Medical Group’s breach and the devastating impact it had on Dr. Preissler’s Hartford-based surgical practice,” says Goodbaum. “Dr. Preissler is a wonderful man, and we are thrilled for him and his family. We only wish that heart surgery patients in the Hartford area had been able to benefit from his surgical excellence over the past five years.”
Preissler had a separation agreement with his former employer that required Hartford Healthcare Medical Group to instruct three of its employed surgeons to provide Preissler with clinical coverage at Hartford Hospital, which he needed to maintain his surgical privileges at the Hospital and continue his surgical practice in the Hartford area.
Attorneys Fitzgerald and Goodbaum proved to the jury that Hartford Healthcare Medical Group not only failed to instruct the surgeons to provide the promised coverage, it also obstructed the surgeons from providing the coverage they were otherwise willing to provide. This resulted in the jury verdict of decimation of Preissler’s Hartford-area surgical practice, which he had built for more than 30 years.