Family of pro baseball player Ryan Costello files wrongful death lawsuit in Lee County

Image via AP.

A Lee County courtroom could host a showdown between the family of Ryan Costello, a young pro baseball player who died suddenly in 2019, and the doctor who allegedly missed clear signs his life was in danger.

Gary Fox of the Miami-based law firm Stewart Tilghman Fox Bianchi & Cain, P.A., filed a medical negligence suit in the 20th Judicial Circuit Court last month against Dr. David E. Olson, a primary care sports medicine physician. Infinite Health Collaborative, the Burnsville, Minnesota medical group for which Olson was working as an agent at the time of Costello’s death, also is listed as a defendant.

In March 2019, Olson examined Costello, who was under contract with the Minnesota Twins and was playing in its minor league feeder system. The examination, intended to determine Costello was medically fit for spring training, occurred in Lee County and included an electrocardiogram (ECG), a routine procedure performed on Major League Baseball players.

Florida Politics contacted Olson, Infinite Health Collaborative and the Twins for comment but received none by press time.

According to the lawsuit, the test showed Costello had Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome (WPW), an extremely rare cardiac abnormality that, if left untreated, can be fatal.

Costello’s ECG “unquestionably showed he had WPW, and unquestionably showed that the abnormalities present on the test required further evaluation before Ryan was allowed to continue playing professional baseball,” the lawsuit said.

A copy of the March 6, 2019, ECG included with the lawsuit shows, in the upper-left-hand corner, the letters “WPW” and that the test’s “findings require further evaluation before participating in strenuous activities.”

A copy of the health report Olson signed shows “Normal” circled under each category of concern, including ECG, and an “X” next to “No action necessary.”

Costello kept playing baseball. That November, the Twins sent him to New Zealand to play in the Australian Baseball League, a fall development league.

Within a week of his arrival, he was found dead in his room of a sudden cardiac arrhythmia. He was 23.

Costello’s death was “entirely preventable,” said Fox, who was hired by Costello’s parents, Christopher Costello and Tammy Costello. The lawsuit does not list how much money they are seeking.

“Anybody reading that report — any cardiologist or doctor — realizes the kid’s got WPW and needs to be seen by a cardiologist or, more specifically, an electrophysiologist with specialty in cardiology dealing with rhythm disorders,” he told Florida Politics. “But for some inexplicable reason, this doctor doesn’t read the report, or certainly doesn’t read it carefully enough, so he misses not only the fact that the rhythm strip is abnormal but that the machine printed out the correct diagnosis, raised all the bells and whistles that needed to be raised about this kid.

“Instead of telling the young man and the group that this fellow had a disorder — he needed to see somebody quickly — the doctor writes on the report, ‘OK,’ indicates there aren’t any problems with it and then follows it up with a written communication that the ECG is normal.”

A native of Wethersfield, Connecticut, Costello had a promising career ahead of him. He was drafted in 2017 by the Seattle Mariners, which traded him to the Twins the following year. By then, he’d earned honors as a Midwest League midseason All-Star.

The Twins sent him to play Class A minor league baseball with the Fort Myers Miracle (now the Mighty Mussels), a team affiliate. During the season, he helped the Miracle win the 2018 Florida State League championship when he hit a three-run homer in an 8-5 victory over Daytona in the fourth game of their series.

Costello later was promoted to play first base, third base and outfield for the Class AA Pensacola Blue Wahoos before being sent to play for the Aukland Tuatara in New Zealand.

After learning of Costello’s death, the Tuatara offered its condolences and said its players were “naturally devastated.” The Twins said the organization was “deeply saddened” by his death. The Mighty Mussels expressed similar sentiments, as did the Blue Wahoos, which described Costello as “a ballplayer whose talent on the field was only exceeded by his kindness off of it.”

Fox said his firm has handled around 1,000 death cases of children and young adults. Each case, he said, is “horrific, every single one of them.” Parents whose children die young, he said, experience higher incidents of depression, divorce and suicide — an assertion backed by research published in the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

“We grow up expecting to bury our parents. Nobody thinks of standing at the grave of your child,” he said. “These cases, it’s things happening out of the natural order of things, and they screw people up. And to make matters worse, in cases like this, it’s not a child dying because he joined the (military), was sent to Afghanistan and died doing something for his country. This kid died because his doctor didn’t do his job. It was medical sloppiness.”

The Costello family sought out Fox’s firm roughly six months ago. Since then, the firm has gone through a pre-screening period, during which it contacted Olson and Infinite Health Collaborative to inform them they were pursuing a case and exchanged information with his lawyers.

The pre-screening period involves a 90-day waiting period to allow the prospective plaintiffs and defendants to reach a resolution. If no agreement is made, the plaintiff is then free to file a case.

“And that’s what we did,” Fox said.

The complaint shows a filing date of Dec. 20, 2021. Since then, he said, the defense has moved to have the case thrown out over a jurisdictional issue. He and his team are now trying to schedule a hearing before the court so they can argue that motion.

“Which we should win, and then off we go taking depositions and so forth and trying to get a trial date as quickly as possible,” he said.

Asked why the Twins aren’t part of the lawsuit considering Olson, a Minnesota doctor, was conducting the exam on the organization’s behalf in another state, Fox said he and his firm are still looking into the matter.

“The relationship between (Olson) and the Twins is something we haven’t gotten into yet,” he said. “We’ve asked about it, but they’ve asked the court to prohibit us from gathering information or taking any depositions until the court rules on the motion to dismiss. So, that’s a good question, and I don’t have an answer to it yet.”