Iraq veteran files lawsuit against VA PTSD treatment

UPDATE
PTSD civil trial could end today
$5 million civil trial against the VA could finish today
Published: September 18, 2012

SCRANTON - A civil trial could wrap up today pitting a Marine Corps veteran from Carbondale against the Department of Veterans Affairs in a $5 million medical malpractice claim over the treatment of his post-traumatic stress disorder.
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Carbondale man seeks $5 million in PTSD lawsuit against VA
BY STEVE MCCONNELL
STAFF WRITER
The Times Tribune
Published: September 11, 2012

A trial got under way Monday for an Iraq War veteran from Carbondale who is suing the Department of Veterans Affairs in a more than $5 million medical malpractice claim for alleged poor treatment of his post-traumatic stress disorder.

Stanley Laskowski III and his wife, Marisol, sued the VA in federal court in 2010, claiming the agency's Plains Twp. medical center prescribed him in 2007 an assortment of medications not suitable for effectively treating PTSD.

"This is not a complicated medical case," Mr. Laskowski's attorney, Daniel T. Brier, said. "The VA knows PTSD ... the way McDonald's knows hamburgers."

Mr. Brier and the government's attorney, G. Michael Thiel, presented starkly different accounts of the VA's handling of Mr. Laskowski's condition and the information - or lack thereof - Mr. Laskowski told clinicians about his recurring nightmares, fits of anger, insomnia, flashbacks and paranoia years after he returned from combat in Iraq in 2003 when he was a sergeant in the Marine Corps.

Mr. Laskowski, 34, left the courtroom when Mr. Brier asked his expert medical witness to describe the bloody scenes in Iraq that spawned his client's condition.

Dr. Harvey Dondershine, M.D., J.D., a psychiatrist with Stanford University, said Mr. Laskowski's psychological tailspin began when he stormed an apartment building in Iraq.
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