Town’s Only Doctor May Lose His Clinic 83-Year-Old Wins $198,000 For Misdiagnosed Broken Leg

This town’s only doctor may have to give up his clinic after losing a $198,000 malpractice lawsuit.

Selling his 20-year practice would be the only way to avoid bankruptcy, said Dr. Tom Van Eaton, who has delivered some 1,300 babies - just 300 fewer than the town’s population.

A Pierce County jury on Monday sided with an 83-year-old woman in her suit against Van Eaton and his physician assistant, Howard Hull.

In the suit, Lucienne Koyle alleged that the clinic misdiagnosed her broken leg in 1993.

Hull said it was just a sprain and Van Eaton never examined her. After five visits to the clinic over 2-1/2 months, her leg was still swollen. Relatives who saw Koyle’s leg convinced her to go elsewhere. She ended up having surgery and spent eight weeks in a nursing home. The whole process cost $35,500.

Koyle decided to sue Van Eaton after he urged her not to, she said. She’d never met him until he visited her three times within 10 days to apologize and offer to do whatever he could to help.

“It was a shock,” she said. “Here he was (in the nursing home). He had never bothered to see me when I was at the clinic.

“No person should have to experience what I have experienced,” said Koyle, who has moved from Eatonville to an apartment for senior citizens in Enumclaw.

Two steel plates are still in her leg, which aches with changes in temperature. She used a cane before the injury but now needs a walker.

Van Eaton, 55, contends Koyle, a former employee at Macy’s in San Francisco, sued to bolster the small pension and Social Security benefits she now lives on.

“It’s my opinion it wasn’t malpractice. I saw no fractures,” said the doctor, who looked at an X-ray of Koyle’s leg.

Hull could not be reached for comment.

Van Eaton said neither he nor Hull carried malpractice insurance when Koyle came to them for help. They got the insurance in 1994 because the state required them to get hospital privileges to treat patients on public assistance. Doctors without malpractice insurance can’t work in hospitals.

“This is an example of no good turn goes unpunished,” said Van Eaton. He now regrets making time for Koyle, who wasn’t a patient before.

His clinic is open 12 hours a day, five days a week. Van Eaton also answers the phone after hours and on weekends, and still makes house calls in the 1963 Chevrolet Impala he bought in medical school.

Between 5,000 and 6,000 people in southern Pierce and eastern Lewis counties visit Drs. Tom and Howard, as many call them.

Many loyal patients want to help out. A rally is planned today at Van Eaton’s clinic.

A flier about the rally calls Koyle’s lawsuit frivolous. But Van Eaton said he doesn’t see it that way. Neither does Koyle’s lawyer, Frank Shoichet.

“The only people who don’t understand this are blinded by the bright light of friendship. We respect their loyalty,” Shoichet said. “I wonder how they would feel being told to walk on a broken leg for 2-1/2 months.”

The doctor makes about $100,000 a year but gives most of his money to Christian charities, he said. His wife, Louise Ann, is a janitor and pays the bills.

The clinic, he said, is his only asset. The house he lives in - his grandfather’s - is already mortgaged. Recently, he’s put three of his six children through college.

In all, Van Eaton owes $460,000, said his lawyer, P.J. French.

“I said I was sorry (Koyle) had a bad outcome,” said Van Eaton. “I didn’t say I was responsible for the bad outcome. Stuff like that happens in medicine. Are you perfect? Do you never make a mistake? Is every mistake malpractice?”