A Chicago surgeon has been found not guilty of negligence in the death of a 77-year-old woman who died about a month after the surgeon performed a second operation to find and remove a nickel-size tumor in her colon.

During an initial surgery in 2000, James F. Boffa, MD, removed a mass of tissue that wasn't cancerous from Wanda Boone's colon. Because he didn't find the cancerous tumor that had been identified in a gastroenterologist's colonoscopy report, Dr. Boffa performed a second surgery on Ms. Boone 5 days later, during which he removed the tumor.

Ms. Boone died about a month after the second surgery. Her family then sued Dr. Boffa for negligence, claiming that he violated the standard of care because he did not find the cancerous tumor during the first surgery and performed the second surgery too soon after the first one. "The surgeon has no excuse," says Michael Rathsack, an attorney for Ms. Boone's family. "It's his job to find the tumor." Ms. Boone's family claims that she died because of the stress of second surgery.

During the trial in Cook County Circuit Court in 2006, Dr. Boffa denied that he was negligent when he didn't find the tumor during the first operation because it turned out to be about 8 inches away from the where the gastroenterologist, in his colonoscopy report, said it was supposed to be, according to court documents. Dr. Boffa and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Earlier this year, attorneys for Ms. Boone's family appealed the jury's verdict, because the instructions that the jury received allowed them to consider more than just the issue of whether Dr. Boffa was negligent and breached the standard of care. In an opinion published in June, the Appellate Court of Illinois upheld the jury's verdict. although the appeals court agreed that the trial court erred when it gave the jurors instructions. But the error was not serious enough to reverse the verdict, wrote the court.

Mr. Rathsack has appealed Ms. Boone's family's case to the Supreme Court of Illinois, and he says the court should decide in late September whether it will hear the appeal.

Kent Steinriede

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