Ralph Morales secured a defense verdict in the Bronx in a challenging matter involving claims that a Brooklyn-based hospital failed to timely administer tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) to a 35-year-old patient who was exhibiting stroke-like symptoms. The plaintiff claimed that the patient was eligible for tPA administration because ICU nurses performed a pain assessment upon him roughly four hours before a CT scan ruled out a hemorrhagic stroke. Plaintiff argued that this pain assessment qualified as the patient’s “last known normal” therefore tPA was indicated as it could have been administered within the permissible 4.5 hour window. Mr. Morales successfully refuted this claim by arguing that the pain assessment did not qualify as the patient’s last known neurological normal because the ICU nurses did not perform a neurological examination. Rather, the last known neurological normal occurred nearly seven and a half hours before the patient began exhibiting stroke-like symptoms, when ICU nurses documented an extensive neurological examination. Mr. Morales successfully argued that tPA administration was contraindicated because the 4.5 hour window within which it could safely be administered was closed.