Legal Question in Medical Malpractice in Ohio

Short answer is Possibly. Longer and more complicated answer is it depends on a number of facts that are not clear from your question. When you indicate you had a massive rupture, it sounds like you had a ruptured or herniated disk. Often a ruptured or herniated disk may not show up on plain x-rays. If you were able to walk out of the hospital on your own then the initial diagnosis of muscle spasms may have been reasonable. If your pain and symptoms got worse the next day which was Friday or over the weekend you probably should have returned to the emergency room if you could not get in to the family doctor. Given the description of your disk injury it is hard to determine if you required surgery or not after the MRI was performed. If you did it is going to be hard to hold the emergency room doctor responsible since you were likely to need surgery anyway and the level of current problems with your leg may be the same even if an MRI had been ordered in the emergency room and you had been seen by an orthopaedic surgeon earlier. If you did not require surgery and have been treated conservatively it may be difficult to prove that any delay or alledged negligence on the part of the emergency room caused you problems. Usually if there is any evidence to strongly consider that you might have a serious herniation that requires urgent or emergency treatment the emergency room doctor would recommend admission to the hospital. An attorney would need to see the emergency room records, your history that you gave at the time of presentation and how you responded to the treatment in the emergency room and what the x-ray showed. All in all not knowning whether you have suffered any permanent injury to the nerves in your leg that could have been avoided by earlier treatment I suspect that the decision of the emergency room doctor was probably reasonable and would be difficult to prove through expert testimony to be substandard of negligent. Hope this helps.