Inmate Gets Million For Amputation

NEWS ARTICLE EXCERPT

By: Clif LeBlanc, The State (Columbia, SC), May 24, 2001

A Lowcountry physician who was a prison doctor in 1995 plans to appeal Tuesday's $1 million jury award for a state inmate who had a finger amputated with a dental instrument.

A lawyer for the inmate Keith Bates, now 71, said the money is the biggest award ever in South Carolina for a prisoner. But Joseph Brennan, the attorney for Dr. William Fender, said Wednesday that he will ask the state Appeals Court to reverse the malpractice verdict and the $250,000 in actual damages and $750,000 in punitive damages.

If the Bamberg County jury decision stands, the money would be paid by an insurance company, not the state. That's because Fender was a contract worker at the prison. He was employed by Correctional Medicine Services Inc., which had private insurance.

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