$10.2 Million Verdict Over a Pitocin-Related Birth Injury at Ascension All Saints Hospital
After trial: Wisconsin caps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases at $750,000. No source reviewed confirms whether that cap was applied to this verdict at judgment, so the $10.2 million reported here is the jury's verdict, not a confirmed final judgment amount.
Won by Beam Legal Team LLC.
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.
What happened
The mother, Monica Cerna, went into labor at Ascension All Saints Hospital in Racine, Wisconsin. To speed the labor along, hospital staff administered Pitocin, a synthetic version of the hormone oxytocin that is used routinely to strengthen and accelerate contractions. The family's case centered on how that drug was managed once it was started: Pitocin was given, they alleged, without the mother being told, and at a dosage that drove contractions to an excessive level and kept them there for hours.
Pitocin is not a drug that can simply be dosed and left alone. Because it can overstimulate the uterus, the standard of care requires close monitoring of both the contractions it produces and the fetal heart rate, with the dose adjusted or stopped if the baby shows signs of distress. The family's attorney, Matthew Patterson of Beam Legal Team, argued at trial that the standard of care governing Pitocin was not followed in this case, and that what happened to the child was the result of carelessness rather than an unavoidable complication of labor.
The baby was delivered by cesarean section not breathing and with a minimal pulse. She was moved to the neonatal intensive care unit and later to a children's hospital for further treatment. Brain imaging showed lasting damage, the kind of injury that follows when a baby's brain is deprived of adequate oxygen during the period surrounding delivery. Patterson described the outcome as totally preventable.
The defendants named at trial were the obstetrician, Dr. Christina Sullivan, D.O., and Ascension All Saints Hospital, Inc. The case had been filed roughly six years before it reached a jury, a timeline not unusual for birth injury litigation, where the full extent of a child's neurological outcome often cannot be assessed, and therefore cannot be fully litigated, until the child is older. On February 10, 2025, the Racine County jury returned a verdict of $10.2 million for the family.
Wisconsin caps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases at $750,000. That cap has applied to jury verdicts against Wisconsin healthcare providers for years, and it would ordinarily be relevant to a verdict this size if a substantial share of the $10.2 million represents pain-and-suffering and similar noneconomic damages rather than the economic cost of the child's future medical care and lost earning capacity. No source reviewed for this case confirms whether the cap was applied to reduce the verdict at the judgment stage, what the composition of the award was between economic and noneconomic damages, or what final amount, if any, was actually entered or paid. The $10.2 million reported here is the jury's verdict. Whether a reduced figure was later entered as the final judgment is unconfirmed.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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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 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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