He Arrived With a Stage-One Pressure Sore and Could Not Turn Himself Over. Within a Month the Bone Was Exposed.
After trial: Affirmed. The jury returned $2,000,000 after a six-day trial on November 14, 2017, and the Utah Court of Appeals affirmed on June 20, 2019 in Sprague v. Avalon Care Center, 2019 UT App 107, 446 P.3d 132 (No. 20180019-CA), rejecting both the directed-verdict challenge and every objection to the plaintiff's expert testimony. The opinion records no reduction, offset or apportionment and does not itemize the award. One discrepancy worth disclosing: trial counsel's own website describes this result as $1,833,000. The appellate opinion states $2 million with no reduction mentioned, and we publish the opinion's figure because a published appellate opinion outranks a firm's own summary. We could not establish what the $1,833,000 figure represents.
Won by Christensen & Jensen, P.C..
Morley Reed Sprague had advanced multiple sclerosis and lower-body paralysis and could not reposition himself. He entered Avalon Care Center with a small stage-one pressure ulcer on his right buttock. Within a month it had deteriorated to exposed bone and become infected. He never recovered and died 22 months later.
What happened
Morley Reed Sprague had advanced multiple sclerosis with paralysis of his lower body. He could not turn himself over or shift his own weight, which is the single fact that makes a pressure sore a nursing-home problem rather than a patient's problem: somebody else has to move him.
He was admitted to Avalon Care Center in 2012 and stayed twenty-nine days. He arrived with a small stage-one pressure ulcer on his right buttock, which is the mildest grade there is.
Within one month it had significantly deteriorated, to the point where bone was exposed, and it had become infected. It was removed. He never recovered, and he died 22 months later.
The case against Avalon was made up of seven specific failures rather than a general complaint about care: inadequate turning, leaving him in a wheelchair for excessive periods, failing to provide a ROHO cushion, delaying an air mattress, using unqualified staff, failing to refer him to a specialist, and inadequately involving his family.
After a six-day trial the Third District Court jury in Salt Lake County returned $2,000,000 on November 14, 2017.
Avalon appealed, challenging the denial of its motion for partial directed verdict and the admission of the plaintiff's expert testimony. On June 20, 2019 the Utah Court of Appeals rejected every ground and affirmed.
Cheryl Sprague, suing individually and on behalf of her husband's heirs and estate, was represented on appeal by Karra J. Porter and Kristen C. Kiburtz of Christensen and Jensen. Younker Hyde Macfarlane served as trial counsel.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Sprague v. Avalon Care Center, 2019 UT App 107, 446 P.3d 132 (No. 20180019-CA, June 20, 2019): the opinion, giving the $2 million verdict for Cheryl Sprague individually and on behalf of the heirs and estate of Morley Reed Sprague, the advanced multiple sclerosis with lower-extremity paralysis and inability to reposition, the twenty-nine day stay, the stage-one ulcer on the right buttock that within a month had deteriorated to exposed bone and become infected, the death 22 months later, the seven alleged breaches, the affirmance of the denial of partial directed verdict and of the expert-testimony rulings, and the counsel block naming Karra J. Porter and Kristen C. Kiburtz of Salt Lake City
- 2.Justia's copy of the same published Utah Court of Appeals decision, confirming the citation, the docket number and the affirmance
More proven verdicts from Christensen & Jensen, P.C.
All Christensen & Jensen, P.C. proven verdicts →Lillian Birt was in the ICU with respiratory failure, septic shock and reduced heart function. Her children agreed to discontinue life support because they understood from her doctors that her condition was terminal and treatment was only prolonging her death. It was not terminal, and there was a high likelihood she would have recovered. She died about eight hours later.
Amy Herzog worked at Jupiter Bowl in Kimball Junction. During a Park City Mountain Resort employee party in April 2019, a resort employee performed a 360-degree spin and released his ball into her lane while she was freeing a stuck ball from the gutter, crushing her left hand. Three surgeries left her with a permanently deformed hand that cannot form a fist. A Summit County jury found Vail Resorts 80 percent at fault and its employee 20 percent, awarded $2,402,000, and found the employee was acting within the scope of his employment. The trial judge later vacated the employer-liability finding and cut the award by 20 percent, but the Utah Court of Appeals reversed that ruling in 2025 and reinstated the full judgment.
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.
A Kansas City jury awarded ovarian cancer patient Georgia Hayes $225 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages against pharmacist Robert Courtney, who had diluted chemotherapy drugs for profit. The trial judge later reduced the award to roughly $330 million, and Hayes collected almost nothing from Courtney himself, whose assets had been seized by the federal government. Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, and drug makers Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb later paid $71 million to settle victims' claims.