Cook County Jury Awards $55.5 Million Over Birth Injury at University of Illinois Hospital
Won by Beam Legal Team LLC.
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.
What happened
Shannette Slater was admitted to University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago on April 12, 2003, to give birth to her son, Shamond Butler. Her pregnancy was high-risk. She had gestational diabetes and asthma. According to her son's trial counsel, the attending physician did not see her for six to seven hours after she was admitted.
Her care in those hours fell to a fellow-in-training, Dr. Monique Schoenhage (then known as Monique Brown), and a resident-in-training, Dr. Michelle Kominiarek. Neither was board-certified at the time. Doctors gave Slater Pitocin, a drug that brings on contractions. According to the complaint, it cut off the oxygen supply to her baby before birth, and Butler developed fetal tachycardia, an elevated heart rate in utero. The plaintiff's case at trial was that the doctors should have stopped the Pitocin immediately and treated Slater with antibiotics, and that the hospital had not given the two trainees the staffing, training and resources they needed.
Slater eventually underwent an emergency cesarean section. Her son needed to be intubated about five hours after birth and spent eight days on life support in the hospital's newborn intensive care unit. He survived, but the oxygen deprivation during labor left him with severe, permanent brain damage.
Butler was 20 years old at the time of the verdict. According to his lawyer and reporting on the trial, he functions at roughly the cognitive level of a two-year-old. He cannot speak, cannot read, and cannot understand basic safety on his own. He requires round-the-clock care and will for the rest of his life.
The complaint was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County in 2017. Schoenhage and Kominiarek were named as defendants, and the University of Illinois Hospital and Health Sciences System was named as a respondent. Matthew Patterson represented Butler at trial before Judge Janet Brosnahan at the Daley Center. After a three-week trial, the jury returned a verdict of $55.5 million on October 11, 2023.
The hospital did not concede fault. In a statement after the verdict, a spokesperson for University of Illinois Chicago said the university empathized with the family and respected the legal process, and had 'full confidence in the care provided at our hospital and clinics.' Illinois does not cap medical malpractice damages: the state supreme court struck down the state's malpractice damages cap in 2010, so the jury's award was not subject to a statutory reduction.
No appeal of the verdict has surfaced in news coverage in the years since.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 12 2023: verdict amount, verdict date, three-week trial, court and judge, party posture (doctors as defendants, hospital system as respondent), 2017 complaint date, labor and delivery timeline, Pitocin and antibiotics allegations, trainee status, injury description, and names Matthew Patterson as Butler's lawyer
- 2.FOX 32 Chicago, Oct 2023: corroborates verdict amount, defendants, physicians' training status, Pitocin and antibiotics allegations, intubation and eight days on life support, the UI Health statement, and names Matthew Patterson as plaintiff's attorney
- 3.Crain's Chicago Business, Oct 2023: independent trade coverage corroborating the $55.5 million award against the UI Health doctors
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 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 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.
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