MOULTRIE — A plaintiff is making his third attempt at a lawsuit against a Moultrie surgeon after two earlier attempts ended in mistrials.

Jury selection took all day Monday in a malpractice suit against Dr. Thomas Estes.

Supporters of the defendant, including several physicians, again were present in the galley, as they have been in the first two trials. Rather than answering jury selection queries in open court (which is the common practice) more than a dozen members of the jury pool elected to be questioned privately in chambers, court officials said.

Plaintiff Kenneth Fletcher, of Omega, is alleging Estes, 3004 Second St. S.E., was negligent in his failure to diagnose an abdominal injury that later turned septic and nearly cost him his life.

This trial is being heard by Judge John D. Crosby — a different judge than the last two trials. Judge Frank Horkan recused himself after he directed a mistrial in the second day of the August trial when plaintiff’s attorney Hugh Gordon, of Tifton, failed to abide his direction.

The first trial resulted in a hung jury.

Fletcher said Estes released him from Colquitt Regional Medical Center three days after a motor vehicle accident and he later had to undergo multiple surgeries and a four-month stay in a Tifton hospital, much of which was spent unconscious with a gaping hole in his abdomen.

Fletcher would not consent to surgery at CRMC, Estes said in an earlier interview with The Observer. The doctor recommended exploratory surgery on the day after Fletcher’s admittance into the hospital, and surgery was mentioned every day after that, Estes said. Fletcher and his wife “elected to go with a conservative therapy — a watch and wait,” the defendant said.

Estes said the plaintiff’s main complaints were neck, back and foot pain, not abdominal pain. Fletcher suffered a rare development after his abdominal injury that did not manifest until after he was discharged from CRMC, the surgeon said.

“He asked me if there was any way to get away without surgery, and I told him there might be a good chance we wouldn’t have to have surgery, because when I’ve explored this type patient in the majority of times, the bleeding has already stopped, as it had in his case. (You) suck out the blood and close them up, and they don’t have any more problems,” he said.

In the last trial, Fletcher lifted his shirt to show the jury the colostomy opening in his abdomen that a surgeon in another city created after a colectomy (removing the bad part of the colon and joining the remaining sections).

Estes said he has done at least 1,000 colectomy procedures and has never placed mesh in an infected abdomen as the other doctor did. The mesh made Fletcher’s condition worse, he said.

“I’m not criticizing at all, but I’ve never treated a colectomy with a colostomy in the manner that he elected to treat him which brought on the umpteen operations and complications thereafter,” Estes said. “I don’t know if they’re going after me, because (the other doctor) lost his privileges and has no malpractice insurance. In other words, this whole thing is about money, and they’re going for whoever they can get with the deepest pockets, so to speak.”



To contact reporter Lori Glenn, call 985-4545, ext. 224.