A Las Vegas, N.M., jury awarded $10.3 million to the estate of a Raton man who sued Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center after he developed bed sores.

Of the total awarded Friday before State District Judge Abigail Aragon in the Fourth District, $595,000 was designated as compensatory damages and $9.75 million as punitive.

"Alfred Gonzales was somebody that didn't receive the proper care that he needed, and the jury respected him enough as a person to acknowledge that and award a big enough sum that we hope health care companies will take notice of it and treat everybody with the kind of care that they deserve," said Lee Hunt, one of three lawyers who worked on the case.

According to court documents, Gonzales was treated at St. Vincent following hip surgery. He suffered from "pressure wounds" and malnourishment after his stay because employees failed to follow the hospital's protocol for preventing those type of conditions. The suit also accused the hospital of falsifying entries in Gonzales' medical record.

Gonzales, a cemetery maintenance worker with an eighth-grade education, was born and raised in Raton.

According to attorney Tom Rhodes, who worked on the case alongside Hunt and attorney Ethan Shaw, Gonzales in the 1980s underwent surgery to remove a brain tumor, leaving him "significantly cognitively impaired."

Rhodes said Gonzales spent a week at St. Vincent in 2006 after undergoing hip surgery, then spent a week at the Casa Real Health Care Center in Santa Fe before returning to St. Vincent for two more weeks. He was later transferred to a nursing home in Las Vegas, N.M.

Rhodes said Gonzales developed serious bed sores on his heels at St. Vincent because the hospital failed to follow its system of screening for and protecting against "pressure ulcers." Rhodes said Gonzales should have received a special mattress and "boots for his heels" to guard against the sores, but he did not.

"They just kind of ignored him," said Rhodes. "Shift after shift after shift, they didn't do what they were supposed to do. After they knew he had a problem, they charted saying there was no problem. It was haphazard and reckless, like they weren't really doing the stuff; they were just writing it down. A lot of it had to do with the fact that he couldn't communicate well."

Gonzales died in 2008 at age 57 from causes unrelated to this case. The award will be paid to his estate.

Two nursing homes — Casa Real Health Center in Santa Fe and Vida Encantada Nursing and Rehab in Las Vegas, N.M. — were also named in the original suit. Vida Encantada settled out of court, Rhodes said. The case against Casa Real is still pending.

Rhodes said St. Vincent didn't present much of an explanation in its defense.

"We were talking about the actions of registered nurses and they didn't even bring a registered nurse in (to testify)," he said. "They brought in a licensed practical nurse. A hospital system that makes $288 million per year in revenues did not even bring in a registered nurse."

Hunt said it took a week to present the case to the jury, and jurors spent two half-days deliberating before rendering a verdict Friday.

"We are very proud of this jury," Rhodes. "This hospital had clearly reckless conduct and they really didn't have anyone come in to defend their recklessness. The jury made a statement that this has to stop."

St. Vincent spokesman Arturo Delgado said in a written statement Friday that the hospital was "shocked at the punitive amount recommended by the jury," and will appeal the verdict, "as we are concerned about the impact of this judgment on our healthcare system."

Delgado wrote that experts debated whether the hospital's actions caused significant harm to Gonzales, but that privacy laws and respect for the family prevented the hospital from commenting specifically on his case.

"We respect the jury for their service and time spent on this case," Delgado wrote. "However, we respectfully disagree with some major portions of their decision."

Delgado added that the hospital takes "care of people at their most vulnerable, and we take that role very seriously... with this patient and with all of our patients.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.