Washington prisons settle lost penis case

A man who said a bad diagnosis caused him to lose his penis and a testicle to flesh-eating bacteria while in prison has won a $300,000 settlement from Washington state.

Charlie Manning, 61, who now lives in a motor home near Lake Cushman on the Olympic Peninsula, told The Seattle Times on Monday he expects to net about $115,000 this week after paying lawyer costs and other bills.

"It's been a nightmare. I figured I should settle for what I could get because I just want it behind me," Manning said. "It's unreal. It's like something from Mars."

Daniel D. DeLue, Manning's lawyer, said he was disappointed by the amount of the settlement but understood his client's desire to avoid a long legal battle.

The state agreed to settle on Oct. 17 in Thurston County Superior Court in Olympia "to save taxpayers the expense of continued litigation," according to a statement issued Monday by the Department of Corrections.

"While the end result was unfortunate and Mr. Manning's original diagnosis turned out to be inaccurate, this was the result of a misdiagnosis, not the result of poor medical care," corrections officials wrote. "Not all medical judgments - whether performed in a prison or at a doctor's office - are infallible."

Manning was sent to the Stafford Creek Correctional Center, six miles southwest of Aberdeen, in 2004 after being sentenced to a year and a month for threatening a neighbor and stealing the man's pistol during a drunken argument in Mason County. He record included at least two drunken-driving convictions and a third felony.

After he developed an infected hemorrhoid and his symptoms worsened, including a fever, swollen genitals, bleeding from the rectum and a rash on his torso, prison medical staff diagnosed him as having an allergic reaction to cold medicine.

By the time a doctor at Grays Harbor Community Hospital in Aberdeen found Manning had necrotizing fasciitis, or flesh-eating bacteria, and he was flown to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, the bacteria had spread to his pelvic area.

Surgeons had to remove several pounds of flesh, including his penis and a testicle, to save his life, DeLue said. A replacement penis was made with skin from Manning's thigh.

Dr. Muhammad A. Khurshid, head physician at Stafford Creek when the ailment was misdiagnosed, left the prison system soon after Manning filed suit in 2007, DeLue said. The lawsuit alleged that Khurshid's delay in diagnosis let Manning's infection spread.

Separately, Khurshid was suspended from his prison job for three days without pay in 2006 for accepting about $10,000 from two drug companies, a violation of the prison system's ethics code.

According to the state Health Department, Khurshid is no longer licensed to practice medicine in Washington state but is licensed to practice in Illinois, where he had an internship before moving west.

"The fact that Dr. Khurshid isn't there (at the prison) anymore is a positive sign," DeLue said.