Medical Malpractice
If your surgeon damaged your common bile duct during gallbladder surgery — and failed to recognize or repair it — you may have a strong medical malpractice case. These are high-stakes injuries that can leave patients with lifelong complications, multiple surgeries, infections, and, in some cases, life-threatening consequences.
Our experienced medical malpractice lawyers handle common bile duct injury lawsuits nationwide. We represent patients who suffered serious harm after a laparoscopic cholecystectomy — also known as “lap chole” — when a surgeon misidentified critical anatomy and cut the wrong structure. In too many cases, doctors either cause the injury or fail to detect and treat it in time, turning a routine outpatient procedure into a catastrophe.
If you believe your gallbladder surgery was botched, contact us now at 800-553-8082 or get a free case review online. We know these cases. Our lawyers have recovered millions of dollars for victims in common bile duct injury lawsuits — and we have the verdicts and settlements to prove it.
Overview of Gallbladder Surgery and the Common Bile Duct
The most definitive way to remove gallstones is to remove a patient’s gallbladder. Like the spleen, the gallbladder has several functions. But it is not a necessary organ. The gallbladder is a storage tank in your body. Think of it metaphorically as a big fuel storage tank you see along the highway.
The gallbladder stores bile, which the liver uses to aid in the digestion of food. When you eat something hard to digest, the gallbladder helps the digestive process along by squirting bile into your digestive tract. The bile is transmitted through a tube called the cystic duct to the common bile duct.
But gallbladders are a bit fragile. One common problem is that clumps of stuff, called stones, form inside the gallbladder. When the stone passes from the gallbladder into the small intestine—or lodges in the biliary duct—it can be extremely painful.
You do not need a gallbladder, and the surgery is generally an outpatient procedure with a short recovery time. So it is usually a no-brainer to just remove the gallbladder. Accordingly, laparoscopic cholecystectomy has become a relatively standard procedure for dealing with gallstones. The technology employed in laparoscopic cholecystectomy is phenomenal. The surgeon uses a camera that gives a great view of the patient’s abdomen.
In taking out the gallbladder, the surgeon has to cut the cystic duct. Before doing so, the surgeon seals the cystic duct with a surgical clip so that bile does not run loose throughout the stomach. Obviously, you need to clip and cut carefully, and you need to be able to see the surgical field before you clip and cut.
Because it is important to protect the common bile duct. What happens in gallbladder surgery cases that end up as malpractice lawsuits is that the doctor cuts the bile duct because they confuse it with the cystic duct. What happens when you cut the common bile duct is that bile leaks into the stomach. This can cause serious injury and death.
Prevention of Injury and the Skill and Care of the Doctor
Early on in a laparoscopic cholecystectomy, if there is any question as to where the ducts are, the surgeon can perform an intraoperative cholangiogram, which is an X-ray that gives the doctor a good, clear view.
The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons recommends that intraoperative cholangiograms be ” applied liberally” before surgery to help visualize the nuances of the patient’s anatomy. Still, cholangiograms are performed in only 5-10% of laparoscopic gallbladder surgeries.
The malpractice problem arises because doctors with very different skill levels perform gallstone surgery. Remember, this is not a rare procedure. There are not a handful of skilled specialists performing this surgery—lots of doctors do it.
There is also a financial motivation that attracts surgeons to this minimally invasive procedure (including a lot of gallbladder removal procedures for patients who did not have stones). When this procedure was developed in 1989, surgeons rushed in massive numbers to learn the surgery, taking weekend courses in laparoscopic cholecystectomy by practicing on pigs and then rushing – lucratively – to patients. There are many malpractice lawsuits that skip the surgical negligence claims and argue that the real cause of the patient’s injuries was unnecessary gallbladder surgery.
In fact, so many patients had their gallbladders unnecessarily removed that hospitals threatened to revoke the privileges of doctors who were rushing patients to surgery in mass numbers. To this day, there are a lot of doctors performing this surgery who should not be performing the surgery because they are not qualified.
- Sample lap chole lawsuit filed in Baltimore
- Another example lap chole lawsuit
- Common defenses to bile duct injury lawsuits
- Ozempic gallbladder lawsuit
The Common Bile Duct
Certainly, the goal is to avoid cutting any duct but cutting (or failing to secure) the common bile duct causes the most medical malpractice lawsuits. When the common bile duct is compromised, there are often no immediate symptoms.
But, eventually, bile may leak into the abdomen, which can lead to serious complications, such as strictures, cholangitis, and pancreatitis, and other complications that, if not identified and carefully monitored, can result in death.
If the bile duct is completely cut, bile is invariably going to leak into the stomach, causing severe and sometimes fatal complications. Often, even in less severe cases, the compromised bile duct needs to be repaired, requiring another surgery, an extended hospital stay, and thousands of dollars in unnecessary medical bills.
Is Cutting the Bile Duct Automatic Malpractice?
Not every bile duct injury is due to negligence. But many are. Courts look at whether the surgeon failed to use reasonable care, like misidentifying the cystic duct or failing to use a cholangiogram when they should have.
Many doctors have argued that cutting or nicking the common bile duct is an inherent risk of gallbladder surgery. Dr. Josef E. Fischer, a Harvard doctor, wrote a polemic on this subject in an editorial in the American Journal of Surgery. He lashed out at malpractice lawyers and argued that 97% of injuries during gallbladder surgery are not caused by medical negligence.
Dr. Fischer acknowledges that many surgeons disagree with him and also acknowledges that there is a significant amount of recent medical literature that highlights practical ways to avoid compromising the bile duct during surgery. The National Institute of Health reports that laparoscopic gallbladder surgery injuries are more likely to occur when a surgeon has performed fewer than 25 procedures.
More recent studies have confirmed that the risk of a bile duct injury is much greater during the surgeon’s learning curve, and it continues to be greater than the injury rate for open cholecystectomies even after the surgeon has gained considerable experience with the procedure. The rate of duct injury with the laparoscopic procedure is reported as high as 3 percent. This underscores the obvious: skill matters when a surgeon is removing a gallbladder.
Can an experienced surgeon using ordinary care cut this common bile duct? The answer is almost certainly yes. But injury from cutting the common bile duct is often the result of medical malpractice. As any malpractice lawyer will tell you, it is the same surgeons who are “frequent flyers” in malpractice claims involving common bile duct injuries.
What can often be the larger problem in a lap chole case is what happens after the malpractice occurs. Sometimes, repair of an injury to the common bile duct during the procedure is a simple reconstruction of the duct. But the doctor has to see the symptoms of a bile leak after gallbladder surgery. If the surgeon negligently or willfully ignores the injury and does not see the common bile duct has been compromised, the injury might not be discovered until real damage has been done.
Bleeding Complications from Botched Gallbladder Surgery
Besides a bile duct injury, another problematic complication that often ensues when gallbladder surgery goes awry is bleeding. While minor bleeding is quite common, the surgeon must get the patient back to hemostasis before closing the patient’s surgical wound.
One red flag during a laparoscopic cholecystectomy is bleeding in the triangle of Calot (the triangle bounded laterally by the common hepatic duct, medically by the cystic duct, and superiorly by the inferior edge of the liver). If a doctor drops the ball and does not properly apply the surgical clips, that is going to lead to bleeding. Often, when bleeding goes awry, the surgeon will try to sweep it under the rug instead of getting needed help from a vascular surgeon.
Valuing Common Bile Duck Injury Lawsuits
Reading over the facts and verdicts below may give you an idea of the potential settlement amount or jury payout for your case. That is why we have compiled these verdicts. But while we believe these cases demonstrate what we consider to be normal outcomes, each case is unique. Your case will present different circumstances that may alter your outcome.
It is also important to note that this compilation is not exhaustive, and we have excluded numerous cases – including defense verdicts. Our lawyers have lost bile duct injury cases. If you are a lawyer and have never lost a gallbladder malpractice case, you have not tried many of these cases.
These verdicts underscore that the key to common bile duct injury compensation is the extent of the damages. Thankfully, many patients recover quickly from these botched gallbladder surgery cases and do not have any permanent injuries. Malpractice lawyers struggle with these claims, trying to figure out where the bar should be in terms of how serious the injuries must be to bring a lawsuit.
Our law firm is based in Maryland, but our gallbladder injury attorneys handle these cases nationwide, working with hand-picked local attorneys in the right cases. Our lawyers have included some of these verdicts and settlements below.
Gallbladder Malpractice Settlement Amounts and Jury Payouts
- Maryland, $1.5 Million Verdict (2024): A woman experienced severe abdominal pain after what was supposed to be a routine gallbladder removal surgery. Further examination revealed that a 3-centimeter fragment of her gallbladder had been left inside her, causing serious complications, including infections and ongoing pain. As a result, she required multiple additional surgeries. Medical experts testified that the retained gallbladder piece led to “post-cholecystectomy syndrome,” which essentially nullified the benefits of the initial surgery. The defense claimed that leaving a portion of the gallbladder was a safer approach due to the patient’s anatomy. However, the jury determined that the medical team failed to meet the standard of care, resulting in a $1.5 million award for the woman.
- Georgia, $10.1 Million Verdict (2024): During gallbladder removal surgery, the doctor accidentally transected the patient’s common bile duct. The patient was then transferred to another hospital for five days. An attempt to repair the bile duct was unsuccessful due to the patient’s liver condition, leading to a recommendation to delay further surgery. In the interim, the patient had to use a feeding tube and a bile bag, which she had to manually operate multiple times a day, leading to nausea and discomfort. She suffered from sepsis several times due to infections related to the wound and tubes. The bile duct was eventually repaired, and subsequent surgeries were conducted for hernias related to the repair. A $10 million verdict was affirmed by a Georgia appellate court.
- Virginia, $1.275 Million Settlement (2022). A man underwent gallbladder surgery. He suffered a perforated bowel. The man developed an infection. He was hospitalized for an extended period. The man alleged negligence against the hospital. He claimed the staff failed to address an infection and negligently performed the gallbladder procedure. This case settled for $1,275,000.
- Maryland, $500,000 (2020): This is a classic case where the doctor failed to correctly identify our client’s biliary anatomy before clipping and cutting. This was our client, and this one settled pretty quickly.
- Oregon, $1.1 Million Settlement (2018). Our firm traveled to Oregon to work with referring counsel in Oregon to handle this lap chole case. In this case, the doctor began the operation laparoscopically but converted it to an open procedure due to the confusion after seeing adhesions. What went wrong with this gallbladder surgery was that the doctor failed to interpret an intraoperative cholangiogram correctly and failed to repeat the cholangiogram, which resulted in the transection of a very nice woman’s common bile duct.
- Maryland, $500,000 Verdict (2018). Another great client clipped and transected his common hepatic duct during the operation, which required a subsequent Roux en Y repair operation. Most lap chole cases involve cutting the common bile duct. What was interesting in this case is that the defense claimed that the doctor did not cut the common bile duct. Thankfully, our client was a strong man who made a remarkable recovery without a permanent injury. A Baltimore County jury awarded him $500,000 for a few months of awful pain and suffering. The pretrial offer in the case was $200,000, which can often be the settlement amount for a botched lap chole lawsuit if your lawyer is unwilling to take your claim to trial.
More Lap Chole Settlement Amounts and Jury Payouts
- Maryland $1,106,910.75 Verdict. An absolutely fantastic 75-year-old woman presents to the hospital to undergo a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. During the procedure, the surgeon clipped and cut her common hepatic duct. Although he realizes the error, he does not seek immediate assistance to evaluate the injury. Plaintiff remains hospitalized and, four days later, undergoes a Roux–en–Y reconstructive operation to reconnect the bile duct to her intestines. The plaintiff spends another 14 days in the hospital with months of follow-up care to monitor the drains that remain in her abdomen. Eventually, the drains are removed, and she returns to a relatively normal lifestyle. This case deserved a good gallbladder malpractice settlement. But no substantial pretrial offer was made. So our lawyers took the case to a jury and made them pay. After deliberating for one hour, the jury awards $1,106.910.75. Our law firm handled this case.
- Oregon, $225,000 Settlement. Our client, a twenty-year-old woman from Oregon, went in to have her gallbladder removed. During the procedure, which was performed laparoscopically, the surgeon clipped and cut our client’s common hepatic duct instead of clipping and cutting the cystic duct. The surgeon realized her mistake and attempted to repair the ducts before finishing the surgery. Unfortunately, the repair was not performed properly, and over the next few months, our client had to undergo several additional procedures and an additional surgery to correct the mistake. At her deposition, the surgeon admitted that she did not confirm our client’s anatomy before clipping and cutting what she believed was the cystic duct. She additionally admitted there were multiple ways she could have confirmed the anatomy before completing the surgery. This case settled for $225,000. This value is mainly based on the fact that the patient recovered well and had no permanent injury. Our law firm, Miller & Zois, handled this case.
- California: $7.9 Million Verdict. An obese 24-year-old woman is admitted to the hospital to undergo an endoscopy procedure to diagnose a stomach issue. The woman had been suffering from severe stomach problems for a few months. An anesthesiologist gave the patient propofol as a sedative, as opposed to general anesthesia. Tragically, during the procedure, the patient regained consciousness. Disoriented from the sedation, she panicked and began to flail about, gasping for air. She screamed in pain for approximately 20-30 seconds before falling unconscious. The woman went into acute respiratory failure, suffered cardiac arrest twice, and died soon after the procedure. The family hired a gallbladder malpractice lawyer and filed suit against the anesthesiologist, his practice, and the hospital, alleging that the anesthesiologist was negligent during the procedure. Plaintiffs’ experts opined that the anesthesiologist failed to perform certain safety measures that could have saved the woman’s life. It was determined that given the woman’s significant weight, a general anesthetic should have been used in addition to or instead of propofol and that an endotracheal tube should have been used. The defendants argued that the care provided was appropriate, given the circumstances. The jury disagreed and awarded the family $7.9 million in damages.
- South Carolina: $150,000 Verdict. The plaintiff experiences severe pain after laparoscopic cholecystectomy and is treated with narcotic painkillers during an overnight hospital stay. After being admitted to the emergency room, a CT scan shows fluid in the abdomen. It is discovered that the plaintiff’s bile duct and hepatic duct are lacerated. Physicians place two stents to drain the fluid, and the plaintiff undergoes repair surgery six weeks later. The plaintiff hires a lap chole lawyer and claims the surgeon botched his gallbladder surgery by cutting the common bile and hepatic ducts. The plaintiff also suffers from ongoing eating difficulties and diarrhea because of the injuries. The defendant alleges that there is no evidence of a bile duct injury from the surgery but does not offer an explanation for the injury. The defendant disputes the plaintiff’s continuing symptoms and contends that the plaintiff’s symptoms can occur after a routine cholecystectomy. Plaintiff’s medical malpractice action asks for $119,000 in past medical expenses, $6,000 in lost wages, and damages for pain and suffering. The jury awards the plaintiff $150,000, and the hospital settles for $100,000.
- Tennessee: $175,000 Verdict. The plaintiff’s abdominal pain is linked to a gallbladder complication. The 51-year-old plaintiff successfully underwent laparoscopic surgery. Plaintiff’s pain symptoms continue and five days later, it is discovered that the first surgery created an intestinal tear that has necrosed. Because of the five-day delay, part of the plaintiff’s intestine is removed. The error ultimately results in a fistula complication.
- New Jersey: $430,000. The plaintiff undergoes laparoscopic gallbladder removal surgery. The plaintiff’s attending physician did not perform the surgery as the plaintiff anticipated. Instead, a second-year surgical resident performs the procedure. It is the first time the resident had performed this operation. Shortly after discharge, the plaintiff presents to the emergency room with abdominal bloating, abdominal pain, fever, and jaundice. The plaintiff is referred for exploratory surgery that reveals a cut to the bile duct. This allowed bile to flow into the abdominal cavity. This results in an acute septic condition and other complications in the 24-year-old patient.
- California: $250,000. After more than two years of abdominal pain, a 43-year-old plaintiff undergoes a laparoscopic cholecystectomy to remove the gallbladder. The surgeon divides the common hepatic duct instead of the cystic duct during the surgery. An intraoperative cholangiogram (radiographic image of the ducts) demonstrates the error, and the surgery is converted to an open procedure. During the elongated procedure, the gallbladder is removed, and the severed common duct is repaired by end-to-end anastomosis. The plaintiff’s malpractice lawsuit claims that the doctor failed to perform an adequate dissection of the gallbladder and surrounding tissue before severing the duct tissue.
- Ohio: $196,500. During a laparoscopic cholecystectomy surgery, the plaintiff’s common bile duct is clipped, and a portion is removed. The plaintiff, 42, undergoes additional surgery to repair the duct and an incisional hernia. In the medical malpractice lawsuit, the plaintiff alleges that the doctor failed to properly identify the cystic duct. This is an amazingly low verdict.
- South Carolina: $325,259. The plaintiff suffers from bowel perforation as a result of gallbladder surgery complications.
- Michigan: $1,800,000. During a laparoscopic gallbladder removal surgery, the woman’s hepatic duct is clipped. She suffers complications following surgery. A stent is installed to fix bile leakage. Four months after surgery, she dies from sepsis as a result of a perforated cecum. Her family hires a gallbladder malpractice lawyer who sues the doctor for wrongful death, alleging that the cecum injury occurred when the doctor clipped the right hepatic duct during the gallbladder removal.
- New Jersey: $100,000. The plaintiff, 47, undergoes gallbladder removal surgery, and during the procedure, a clamp is placed over the bile duct but is not removed. To remove the clamp, the plaintiff undergoes a second surgery that results in a large surgical scar and disfigurement.
- New York: $1,350,000. During the plaintiff’s gallbladder surgery, a surgical pad is left in the plaintiff’s body. The plaintiff, 71, suffers from infection and abdomen abscess.
- Florida: $600,000 verdict. A 35-year-old female plaintiff suffered a severed common bile duct and right hepatic artery while a surgeon was attempting to remove her gallbladder. The gallbladder is not removed. The plaintiff’s gallbladder is removed during a later surgery where the severed bile duct and small intestine are reconnected. An error during gallbladder surgery is a common source of medical malpractice claims, mainly because this is a common form of surgery. Most malpractice claims from gallbladder surgery occur when a surgeon does not know where the biliary ducts are on a patient and cuts where the surgeon should not be cutting.
What Is the Average Settlement Amount for a Common Bile Duct Injury Lawsuit?
Defense lawyers tend to push common bile duct injury cases towards $300,000, at least in Maryland. Our average verdict is much higher, so we typically demand settlement payout amounts far greater than $300,000. Our lawyers have gotten verdicts and settlements of over $1 million in common bile duct injury lawsuits.
Is this the value of every bile duct injury case? No. Each case is fact-specific. Our malpractice lawyers have gotten settlements that were less $300,000 and have been very happy with the result because of the unique facts of the claim. That said, most gallbladder malpractice settlements should be in the $500,000 range, and many should be over $1 million.
Defense Against Malpractice Lawsuits Involving Cutting the Bile Duct
Even those that appear to be slam-dunk malpractice lawsuits for cutting the common bile duct and causing injury to the patient are routinely defended. The classic defense in these cases is the “known risk” defense, which pretends that malpractice is not possible if the injury is a known risk. But this is a nonsense defense.
What matters is whether the injury caused in the case could have been avoided by reasonable care, not whether the general injury can happen without negligence. There is a risk every time we get behind the wheel of a car.
When a driver comes across the center line on the highway and hits you head-on, will the negligent driver use the defense that accidents are a known risk when you drive a car? Is “known risk” an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card that means the driver is not obligated to take personal responsibility for the injuries they cause?
Of course not. It is overly simplistic and just plain ridiculous… and regrettably, it can work, especially when plaintiffs’ malpractice lawyers do not frame the issue properly for the jury.
Another common defense after a botched gallbladder surgery lawsuit is the “patient had unusual anatomy” or “he/she was too fat to be able to see” defense. These are slightly more saleable defenses in some cases. But they are often a reflex of surgeons being sued for malpractice.
Typically, there is nothing to suggest unusual anatomy, and no explanation is provided as to why the doctor did not attempt to use a cholangiogram (which malpractice cases rarely involve) to determine the correct placement. You can read in greater detail about the defense doctors raise in these cases here.
- Get sample verdicts in gallbladder removal malpractice cases.
Getting a Lawyer for Your Cut Bile Duct Lawsuit
If your surgeon cut the common bile duct during gallbladder surgery, and it could have been prevented with reasonable care, you may have a strong malpractice case. These injuries are not always considered unavoidable.
Our malpractice lawyers handle negligent gallbladder surgery cases where the bile duct is cut or damaged during surgery, resulting in serious injury to the patient. Our clients have recovered millions of dollars in settlements and verdicts in lap chole cases in and out of Maryland and Washington, D.C.
If you or a loved one suffered from complications as a result of an error or mistake during gallbladder surgery, call our malpractice lawyers at 800-553-8082 or get a free online consultation.
- Video that shows how these lap chole medical malpractice cases work
- Sample Expert Report (in a cut common bile duct malpractice case)
- Request for Admission (tailored for lap chole case)
- Medical Malpractice in Maryland (overview of medical malpractice claims in Maryland)
- Colonoscopy Malpractice (an overview)
- Sample lap chole malpractice lawsuit filed by Miller & Zois
- Ozempic and gallbladder problems are a big issue in litigation in 2025