Fulton County Jury Awards $4 Million to Woman With Nerve Injury After Podiatry Ankle Surgery
After trial: The $4 million verdict was reduced to $3 million by a $1 million offset for Perron's earlier settlement under a separate policy covering Dr. Russell; the defense said it would challenge the verdict and a new-trial motion was reported.
Won by Bell Law Firm.
In May 2023 a Fulton County State Court jury found Village Podiatry Group, LLC liable for a nerve injury suffered by Christine Perron during surgery to repair a broken ankle, and awarded her $4 million. The award was reduced to $3 million by a $1 million offset for a prior settlement under a separate policy covering the surgeon. Perron developed complex regional pain syndrome, a chronic pain condition.
What happened
Christine Perron broke the distal part of her fibula, the outer bone of the ankle, in a fall. In 2016 she had surgery to repair the fracture, performed by Dr. Bryan Russell, a podiatrist then working for Village Podiatry Group, LLC. She said that during the operation Dr. Russell severed a nerve, and that afterward he did not adequately treat the symptoms that followed.
Perron went on to develop complex regional pain syndrome, a condition that causes chronic pain and limits what she can do day to day. She sued the practice in Fulton County State Court (Case No. 17EV005257), arguing that it was responsible for Dr. Russell's care as his employer.
The case went to trial before Judge Melodie Clayton in the week of May 22, 2023. Lloyd Bell and Dan Holloway of Bell Law Firm represented Perron. Laura Eschleman, Tivara Paul and Shawn Choi of Nall Miller defended the practice. The trial ran four days, and the central questions were when the nerve was injured and whether the follow-up care was appropriate.
The defense did not dispute that Perron's nerve was damaged. It argued that the plaintiff had not proven the damage happened in the operating room, pointing to testimony from her treating physician, Dr. Erroll Bailey, who said the injury could have occurred in the fall, during the surgery, or afterward. Perron's side countered with what Dr. Bailey found when he operated on her himself, which they said showed the nerve was most likely cut during Dr. Russell's surgery.
The plaintiff also played an audio recording of a post-operative exam in which Perron described intense pain. Bell contrasted it with Dr. Russell's chart notes, which recorded her as improving, and told jurors the recording showed the doctor had blatantly misled her about her condition. Her case also included testimony from physicians, an economist and Perron's family.
The jury deliberated about three hours and returned a verdict for Perron of $4 million against Village Podiatry Group. Because Perron had earlier settled with Dr. Russell under a separate insurance policy covering him, the court applied a $1 million offset, bringing the judgment to $3 million.
After the verdict, defense counsel said the practice believed there was clear reversible error and intended to challenge the result. A later issue of the American Association for Justice's Professional Negligence Law Reporter noted a motion for new trial. We found no ruling on that motion and no appellate decision.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Courtroom View Network, 'Jury awards $4M in med mal trial over podiatry patient's nerve injury', June 5, 2023·Archived copy
- 2.Courtroom View Network, 'Perron v. Village Podiatry Group, LLC' trial proceedings, May 22-26, 2023·Archived copy
- 3.AAJ Professional Negligence Law Reporter, 'Negligent performance of open reduction internal fixation surgery', Jan./Feb. 2024
More proven verdicts from Bell Law Firm
All Bell Law Firm proven verdicts →A Fulton County State Court jury awarded $75 million to Jonathan Buckelew, who suffered a brain stem stroke after a chiropractic neck adjustment at age 32 and was left with locked-in syndrome when an emergency physician and a radiologist failed to diagnose it for a full day. The Georgia Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment in March 2025.
A Fulton County jury found dermatologist Joseph Payne and his practice liable for missing a recurrence of skin cancer in Tony Waldrop, a Vietnam veteran, after Payne discarded tissue from a 2013 lesion without ordering a biopsy. The cancer went undiagnosed for roughly eight months and required extensive facial surgery that left Waldrop permanently disfigured. In December 2025, on the case's third trial, the jury awarded $32 million to Waldrop's estate and $16 million to his widow, for a combined $48 million. State Court Judge Eric Richardson added $8.8 million in pre-judgment interest, bringing the total judgment to $56.8 million. Waldrop died in 2022, before the case reached its final resolution.
Sandra Williams, a 53-year-old Columbus, Georgia administrative assistant, went to St. Francis Hospital's emergency room three days after neck surgery with breathing and swallowing trouble caused by a hematoma pressing on her trachea. Hospital staff, including on-call physician Erik Westerlund, delayed treating the hematoma, and a subsequent intubation attempt triggered a respiratory collapse that left her blind, brain damaged and dependent on caregivers. A Muscogee County State Court jury cleared the treating pulmonologist and hospital nurses but found St. Francis Hospital fully liable for Westerlund's negligence, awarding Williams $26 million on December 11, 2017. The hospital then agreed to waive any appeal and pay rather than challenge the verdict.
Byung 'Ben' Oh, a retired U.S. Army veteran, fell from a ladder in April 2018 and underwent spine surgery days later. He developed a lymphatic fluid leak that a radiologist worsened with an improperly placed catheter, and his attending physician failed to investigate the ongoing fluid loss as his condition deteriorated. Oh was 77 when he died of septic shock and organ failure on July 21, 2018. A Fulton County jury found the attending physician and her employer 67.5 percent at fault and the radiologist and his practice 32.5 percent at fault, awarding Oh's wife and daughter $15 million on August 4, 2026, and clearing two other treating physicians named in the suit.
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.