Sommers Schwartz attorneys Matthew Turner and Dina Zalewski filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against a Michigan orthopedic surgeon for a motocross racer who suffered a permanent nerve injury when his surgeon sutured a critical nerve during a shoulder stabilization procedure, leaving him with permanent weakness in his arm after the attempted nerve repair failed.
As a result of his motocross racing, the plaintiff had recurrent instability of his right shoulder, a condition in which the shoulder repeatedly slips out of place. Beginning in September 2023, he sought treatment from an orthopedic surgeon. The doctor recommended a Latarjet procedure, a surgical technique used to address chronic shoulder instability by transferring a small piece of bone with its attached muscle to reinforce the front of the shoulder socket and prevent further dislocations.
During the procedure, the surgeon sutured into and damaged the musculocutaneous nerve, a nerve that passes through the shoulder region, controls the biceps muscle, and provides sensation to the forearm. According to the complaint, the surgeon failed to account for where this nerve travels during shoulder surgery. The musculocutaneous nerve runs along a predictable path near the coracoid process, the bony prominence at the center of the Latarjet technique, and its position can shift when the bone block is moved during the operation. Rather than working carefully around this anatomy, the surgeon engaged in blind dissection and used sharp instruments in the area where the nerve is known to be encountered, and placed sutures without adequate precision. The complaint further alleges he failed to properly repair the subscapularis muscle, passing sutures beyond the muscle rather than anchoring it to itself.
The nerve injury produced immediate and lasting consequences. The plaintiff experienced pain, weakness, tingling, and loss of sensation, along with significant atrophy of the biceps muscle in his dominant right arm and hand. An Oberlin nerve transfer, a procedure that reroutes a functioning nerve to reconnect and reactivate the biceps, was performed hoping to restore function. That intervention was not successful.
The standard of care for a Latarjet procedure requires the operating surgeon to understand the trajectory of the musculocutaneous nerve, recognize that it is at risk both medial to and below the tip of the coracoid, and appreciate that the nerve’s position can change as the bone block is repositioned. Proper technique requires meticulous, direct visualization during dissection and precise suture placement in the area where nerves are encountered. Those precautions exist specifically to protect against the type of nerve injury the plaintiff sustained.
The lawsuit seeks compensation for the plaintiff’s pain and suffering, emotional distress, lost wages, diminished future earning capacity, and the cost of the extensive medical treatment his condition has required, including the additional surgical intervention that became necessary after the nerve was damaged. The complaint alleges these conditions are permanent and will require ongoing care and expenditure.
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