An Atlanta man suffered a series of health catastrophes after an alleged mislabeling error at a top-ranked hospital.
Fernando Cluster and his wife, Melinda Cluster, are suing Emory University Hospital Midtown for losing a chunk of Fernando’s skull after surgery for a brain bleed. He claims the hospital then turned around and charged him $19,000 for a synthetic replacement piece that caused an infection.
According to a complaint that was filed on Aug. 8, the 62-year-old suffered “permanent injuries” that have rendered him unable to work, and he has incurred a mountain of medical debt throughout the ordeal, some $150,000. The couple is seeking damages for negligence, “ongoing physical and emotional pain and suffering, and unnecessary medical bills.”
The trouble began nearly two years ago when Cluster was admitted to the hospital in September 2022 after he passed out and fell his lawyer, Chole Dallair, told Law & Crime.
He was diagnosed with a brain bleed and underwent a brain surgery known as decompressive hemicraniectomy, which involved removing a part of his skull — a “bone flap” — that measured 4.7 inches to 5.91 inches, to ease the swelling, court documents obtained by Atlanta Black Star, revealed.
Once he recovered from that surgery, he was scheduled to have his bone flap re-implanted during a cranioplasty on Nov. 11, 2022. Under the best of circumstances, the procedure comes with risks of infection and complications, but no one could have imagined the mix-up that he claims happened.
“Emory personnel could not identity Plaintiff Mr. Cluster’s bone flap,” read the complaint.
“When Emory’s personnel went to retrieve the bone flap, ‘there were several bone flaps with incomplete or missing patient identification’ and therefore, Emory ‘could not be certain which if any of these belonged to Mr. Cluster,’” stated the court documents.
Ultimately, the hospital could not find the piece of his skull they had removed, and they canceled his surgery until a synthetic replacement could be made, reads the lawsuit. In the meantime, Cluster was forced to stay at the hospital for nearly two additional weeks, until Nov. 23, when the synthetic replacement was finally implanted in his skull.
“As a result of Emory’s negligence, Mr. Cluster subsequently suffered an infection in the synthetic flap, thereby necessitating an additional surgery,” said the complaint.
The lawsuit claims that even after its “negligent failure,” the hospital charged their patient not only for the bone flap but for the extra time he was forced to stay in the hospital and for the subsequent surgery. His ordeal is ongoing. Dallair, his attorney, told Law & Crime that he is still recovering from the infection at home.
The lawsuit also includes a type of personal injury claim called a “loss of consortium” from his wife, Melinda, alleging she has been deprived of “love, society, companionship.”
“It is shocking that a medical provider like Emory would lose part of one of its patient’s skulls and then refuse to accept responsibility,” Dallair said.
The Emory University Hospital system is a highly regarded teaching hospital staffed by Emory University School of Medicine faculty and was ranked the “Best In-State Hospital” by Newsweek in 2024.
But another local hospital in the system, Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta, also made recent headlines in local news for very different reasons. In November 2023, around the time of Cluster’s second surgery, a jury ordered the hospital to pay a Georgia mother $38.6 million in one of the biggest medical malpractice cases in the hospital’s history.
The lawsuit accused medical staff of overlooking a scan that could have saved the mother’s 20-year-old son, Tre’von Falson, while he was undergoing a heart transplant in 2017. The plaintiff and the hospital subsequently reached a post-verdict settlement in December.
