Jury awards $8 million to family of woman falsely diagnosed with cancer

• Three years after his wife's death, Chuck Pandrea still hugs the dresses she left hanging in her closet.
• Janet Pandrea, 65, died in April 2002, three months after she visited her doctor for a cold.
• The Coconut Creek grandmother was misdiagnosed and treated for cancer, a disease all the doctors and lawyers now agree she never had.
• Her family sued her doctors and the hospitals who cared for her.
• On Wednesday, after a seven-week trial, jurors in Fort Lauderdale awarded the Pandreas $8 million in damages.
• In January 2002, Janet Pandrea went to see her family physician, Dr. Martin Stone, for a lingering cough.
• Stone ordered a chest X-ray, which revealed a mass in her chest, so the doctor ordered a needle biopsy.
• Dr. Peter Tsivis, a pathologist from Coral Springs Medical Center, admitted during trial that he misdiagnosed her with malignant non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
• Stone referred Pandrea to oncologist Abraham Rosenberg, who began treating her with chemotherapy.
• The jurors laid half of the blame on the oncologist, Dr. Abraham Rosenberg.
• The plaintiffs' lawyers contended he ordered a follow-up test but failed to check the results.
• But Bob Cousins, Rosenberg's attorney, said the pathologist, Tsivis, was to blame.
• Cousins said he believes the plaintiffs' lawyers didn't focus their case on Tsivis or the medical center because, as part of the North Broward Hospital District, Coral Springs Medical Center has a $200,000 cap on damages in medical malpractice awards.
• ''Dr. Stone was not involved in the misdiagnosis of cancer or in the decision to start chemotherapy,'' Silsby said.
• ''I came to the court system because no one would give me answers,'' the 75-year-old widower said Thursday during a press conference at his attorneys' Fort Lauderdale office.