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VA TO PAY $500,000 TO FAMILY OF MAN WHO DIED OF CANCER

Date: September 26, 2007
By: Mike Gangloff / Roanoke Times

The Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem will pay $500,000 to a family who lost their father to colon cancer.

Myra Badger, the daughter of the late Linwood Terrell Hicks of Christiansburg, and other family members sued in March, saying doctors failed to communicate and act upon results of a colonoscopy performed upon Hicks in 1999.

Hicks, a 78-year-old World War II veteran who had served in the Navy, Army and Air Force, died in 2003, almost four years after the colonoscopy found numerous precancerous polyps. The lawsuit said Hicks wasn't told about the polyps and proper follow-up wasn't carried out.

An order filed Tuesday in federal court in Roanoke approved settling the lawsuit with a $500,000 payment to Badger, Hicks' wife, Janice M. Hicks, and the Hickses' children Jan Lang and Jon Hicks. The family members, who had asked for $5 million, will divide the money after attorney fees and costs are paid.

"Mr. Hicks was a great man who served his country for twenty years of active duty," plaintiffs' attorney John Lichtenstein wrote in an e-mail.

"Considering all of the facts of this tragic case, we believe this is a fair settlement that will help the Hicks family move forward."

A representative of the medical center could not be contacted late Tuesday.

Earlier this month, the center was sued over the death of another patient. The family of William Henry Maki Jr. of Montvale, who died while in the center's psychiatric ward, is asking for $15 million.
 

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