A doctor accused of disregarding a blood test that detected a rare and dangerous fungal infection before it killed a Toppenish woman won a jury trial Tuesday.

The Yakima County Superior Court jury ruled 10-2 in favor of Dr. Mark Sauerwein, who was sued along with the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic in connection with the 2006 death of patient Christina Anaya.

Anaya, a 32-year-old married mother of two and diabetic, died in a Yakima nursing home three months after being hospitalized for a massive fungal infection that caused multiple, and ultimately fatal, organ failure.

Capping a weeklong trial in the courtroom of Judge James Lust, lawyers argued in closing remarks Tuesday over Sauerwein's role in spotting the infection.

Anaya's lawyer sought $1.7 million in damages in the case, which was unusual in that it went to trial. Medical malpractice cases are typically settled out of court. Yakima County juries rarely side with plaintiffs in malpractice cases.

Anaya fell ill in August 2006 despite repeated trips to the clinic and Toppenish Community Hospital, where Sauerwein and other physicians struggled to understand a host of symptoms that seemed rooted in Anaya's increasingly poor health due to diabetes.

Richard Johnson, the lawyer for Anaya's estate and her husband, Rodolfo Anaya Gomez, accused Sauerwein of causing a crucial delay of several days in the proper diagnosis for wrongly concluding the blood test was a "false positive" caused by a contaminant.

"Why didn't he heed the clear and unequivocal warning?" Johnson asked the jury, calling the missed opportunity "probably the biggest mistake of (Sauerwein's) career."

But David Thorner, the attorney for Sauerwein and the clinic, said his client's involvement in the case was a minimal "snapshot" when he filled in one day for Anaya's regular family physician.

Thorner noted that Anaya's symptoms had subsided on the day in question and that Sauerwein's decisions "were entirely reasonable, given the sequence of events."

Thorner also assailed Johnson's experts as "hired guns" who make a living testifying against doctors, and he suggested that Anaya herself was ultimately to blame for her rapidly deteriorating condition because she had allowed her diabetes to become "uncontrolled."

He concluded by describing Sauerwein's performance in the case as "concerned, caring, conscientious and competent."