He had fallen in a waiting room at the Torregalli hospital (Florence), tripping over a hole cover and suffering a fracture to his ankle. However, the bone injury developed an infection that forced doctors to amputate his leg and in 2023 he died. After the ordeal, the elderly man's family filed a lawsuit and obtained compensation with a decision of the Court of Appeal of Florence, civil section, which sentenced the ASL Toscana Centro to pay material, moral and biological damages for 493,000 euros plus legal costs for another 45,000 euros.

The court issued a ruling that overturned the first-instance court's decision. The compensation goes to the heirs. The story, reported by La Nazione, begins in 2016 when an 85-year-old man in April 2016 was accompanying his wife for a neurological visit to the Torregalli hospital. The accident occurred in the waiting room when the man lost his balance while stepping over the brass hole cover, which protruded several millimeters from the floor.

After the fracture and the operation, the vicissitudes began. The wound did not heal, and an infection was added to it, degenerating into a muscular necrosis that forced the surgeons to amputate his right leg. A lawsuit was filed. The first-instance court excluded the liability of the ASL and the hospital. The appeals court gave a different interpretation. In the lawsuit, the family's lawyers highlighted that after the accident, the health management of the Torregalli hospital had the chairs moved away from the brass hole covers and had them marked with yellow and black safety tape, indirectly admitting that they recognized them as a potential source of danger of falling.

(Unioneonline/vf)

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