Family of Scott Eriks awarded more than $7 million in wrongful death case

LA PORTE, Ind. - A La Porte Superior Court awarded the family of South Bend native Scott Eriks $7,131,850 in a wrongful death case.

On December 26, 2015, Eriks suffered a heart attack in Michigan City.

The on-call cardiologist was called and paged numerous times but took a significant amount of time to arrive, Kenneth Allen, injury attorney and representative for the Eriks family, said.

“Hospital staff even called the police to go to the doctor’s home, awaken him and tell him this was a life-or-death situation, but the doctor still didn’t arrive for almost 90 minutes. As a result, Scott’s condition deteriorated drastically and irreversibly, and he died,” said Allen. “It was, sadly, a very preventable tragedy.”

At the time of Eriks' death, Indiana law capped the liability of negligent doctors at $250,000.

Anything above that, up to $1,250,000, had to be paid from a fund administered by the Commissioner of the Indiana Department of Insurance Amy Beard.