The POWER 30: John Dornik

Siegel Brill, P.A.

John Dornik practices about half the time in medical malpractice cases and the other half on other personal injury and products liability cases, including plane crashes. Fortunately, those are uncommon. Recently he’s been handling three aviation cases, one in Minnesota, Montana and Alaska. In the latter, four people survived after crashing into the water, Dornik said.

He represents the patient and/or patient’s family in tragic and, he said, preventable malpractice cases. Some involve injuries that occur during birth and affect the child for their entire life. In many medical cases, babies are deprived of oxygen during the birth process and are significantly brain damaged.  “In some of the cases the medical team is not paying attention,” he said.

In another medical malpractice case, a woman diagnosed with cervical cancer was told biopsies of her lymph nodes were negative. They weren’t, and she died of cancer at the age of 41, leaving a spouse and children.

Another malpractice case was failure to diagnose Kawasaki disease in a young child. It is a disease of unknown cause in which blood vessels become inflamed, resulting in heart disease.  The child will require a transplant, and other complications from the disease may ensue. Since the child is very young, the damages will be substantial, Dornik said, and the case is scheduled for trial in 2024.

In a different case involving violence at a dollar store in Burnsville, an argument broke out between an employee and a customer. The customer shot two people, but the employee got out of the store. Of the two people shot, one died and the other is paraplegic. The District Court certified to the Court of Appeals the question of whether the employee’s own conduct created a duty of the store to warn or protect the other customers. But the case was settled confidentially, “to the satisfaction of all the parties,” Dornik said.