Court upholds $14.2 million judgment against UPMC

A panel of Superior Court judges on Monday upheld what amounts to a nearly $14.2 million judgment against UPMC Shadyside, affirming Allegheny County’s largest medical malpractice award in at least the past 13 years, an attorney for the plaintiff said. The March 2012 judgment, which the hospital appealed, stemmed from the death of Michael Rettger, a 24-year-old accountant from Murrysville, Westmoreland County, who was taken to UPMC Shadyside on Nov. 15, 2003, after doctors in Cabell Huntington Hospital in Huntington, W.Va., where he was working, found a mass in his brain diagnosed as a potential brain tumor or abscess.