$31.6 Million Verdict for Girl With Cerebral Palsy, Reportedly Midland County's First Patient Win
After trial: Michigan caps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases, and public reporting does not disclose the economic and noneconomic split or the final judgment after any cap reduction. No appeal has been reported.
Won by Beam Legal Team LLC.
A Midland County jury awarded $31.6 million to the family of a girl left with cerebral palsy, spastic quadriplegia, and a seizure disorder after staff at MyMichigan Medical Center-Midland failed to stop Pitocin or deliver her by emergency cesarean despite fetal monitor strips showing distress, in what local coverage described as the first courtroom win for a medical malpractice plaintiff in the county's history.
What happened
The Berthiaume family's daughter was born on December 20, 2018, at the hospital now known as MyMichigan Medical Center-Midland. During labor, her mother received Pitocin, a drug used to induce or strengthen contractions. According to the evidence presented at trial, the fetal monitor strips showed the baby was in distress caused by excessive uterine activity from the Pitocin, and she needed to be delivered by immediate cesarean section. The medication was not stopped. The cesarean did not happen in time. Deprived of oxygen, the baby suffered severe and permanent brain damage.
She was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, spastic quadriplegia, and a seizure disorder. By the time the case reached trial she was four years old and facing a lifetime of round-the-clock care.
The family sued MyMichigan Medical Center-Midland in Midland County Circuit Court. Matthew Patterson of Beam Legal Team, a Chicago firm that concentrates on birth injury cases, tried the case before Judge Stephen Carras. Patterson, who also serves as of counsel to Michigan's Fieger Law, argued over three weeks of trial that hospital staff ignored what the monitor strips were telling them: the Pitocin was overstimulating the uterus, the baby was in trouble, and she needed to come out.
On May 25, 2023, after more than nine hours of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of $31.6 million for the child and her family. Local news coverage, including ABC12 and WSGW, reported it as the first trial victory for a medical malpractice plaintiff in the history of Midland County. The award was structured to cover the girl's medical and care needs for the rest of her life, along with other damages.
The hospital did not accept the outcome quietly. MyMichigan Health said in a statement that it sympathized with the family and the challenges they have faced and will face, but that it disagreed with the verdict and stood behind the care delivered by its team.
One piece of Michigan law matters when reading a number this large. Michigan caps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases under MCL 600.1483, with a higher cap tier for the most severe injuries, including permanent brain injury resulting in loss of function. Economic damages, such as the cost of lifelong medical care, are not capped. That means the noneconomic portion of a Michigan med-mal verdict is typically reduced when the court enters judgment, while the economic portion stands. Public reporting on this case has not disclosed the verdict's split between economic and noneconomic damages, the final judgment amount after any cap reduction, or the status of any appeal. The hospital's statement disagreeing with the verdict is the last word either side has offered in press accounts.
The jury heard three weeks of evidence in a county where, per local reporting, no malpractice plaintiff had ever won at trial before.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Beam Legal Team LLC
All Beam Legal Team LLC proven verdicts →A Johnson County, Iowa jury awarded the family of an infant identified in court records by the initials S.K. $97.4 million in March 2022, finding an OB-GYN clinic and a hospital equally responsible for a delivery gone wrong at Mercy Hospital in Iowa City in August 2018. The verdict, then the largest medical malpractice award in Iowa history, followed a 14-day trial before Judge Kevin McKeever of the Sixth Judicial District. Mercy Hospital's share was capped at $7 million under a pretrial agreement, which the hospital paid; court filings put the clinic's share of the judgment at more than $75.6 million. The clinic, Obstetric & Gynecologic Associates of Iowa City and Coralville, P.C., did not pay, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2022, saw that case dismissed the following April, and appealed. On November 8, 2024, the Iowa Supreme Court reversed the judgment against the clinic over an evidentiary error and ordered a new trial. Nothing currently stands against the clinic, and no new trial date has been reported.
A Cook County jury awarded Shamond Butler $55.5 million after finding that doctors at University of Illinois Hospital caused severe, permanent brain damage during his April 2003 birth. The suit centered on a delayed response to his mother's high-risk labor and the mismanagement of Pitocin, which cut off his oxygen supply. Butler, who was 20 at the time of trial, functions at the cognitive level of a toddler and requires round-the-clock care. The jury returned its verdict on October 11, 2023, and no appeal has surfaced in coverage since.
A Cook County jury found that staff at University of Chicago Medical Center let a newborn boy go without an emergency cesarean section for roughly 11 hours despite a non-reassuring fetal heart tracing, leaving him with severe hypoxic brain damage and cerebral palsy. On June 29, 2016, after nearly a month of trial, the jury awarded the family $53 million, broken down across past and future medical costs, lifelong caretaking, lost earning capacity, and pain and suffering. The hospital sought a mistrial over alleged misconduct by plaintiff's counsel; a Cook County judge denied that motion in December 2016 and instead trimmed the award by $950,000, entering judgment at $52,050,000. The hospital said it would appeal further, and no independent source confirms what became of that appeal.
A Racine County jury awarded a family $10.2 million after finding that a doctor and Ascension All Saints Hospital mismanaged Pitocin during labor, causing brain damage in the newborn that has lasted into childhood.
Related medical malpractice verdicts
A Utah judge entered a $951 million default judgment against Steward Health Care after newly trained nurses, an excessive Pitocin drip, and a delayed C-section at Jordan Valley Medical Center left a newborn permanently brain damaged.
A Gainesville jury awarded $900 million, including $700 million in punitive damages, to stroke survivor Joseph Webb over neglect at the University Place Care and Rehabilitation Center, in a Wilkes & McHugh case tried against defaulted Trans Healthcare entities with no defense present, but Florida's First District Court of Appeal reversed the judgment in 2013 because the trial court had refused to let a defense lawyer appear, and the money was never collected; the estate's claim was later resolved for a small share of a multi-estate bankruptcy settlement.
A Clark County jury ordered Health Plan of Nevada and Sierra Health Services to pay $524 million after finding the UnitedHealth Group subsidiaries negligently credentialed a gastroenterologist whose unsafe injection practices at his Las Vegas endoscopy clinics caused the largest medically caused hepatitis C outbreak in American history.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.