$5.6 Million Verdict for Brain-Injured Newborn
After trial: Reduced by statute and affirmed. The jury returned $5,625,000, judgment was entered at the $1,250,000 statutory limit, and the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed on May 16, 2003 (265 Neb.
Won by Cullan & Cullan LLC.
A family alleged that negligent management of prenatal care during a 1993 pregnancy caused their son's brain injury. The jury awarded $5,625,000 against an obstetrician and her practice. The statutory cap reduced it to $1,250,000, and the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed against a five-ground constitutional challenge.
What happened
During a 1993 pregnancy, a mother received prenatal care from an obstetrician at the OB/GYN Group in Omaha. Her family's case was that negligent management of that care caused her son's brain injury.
The jury found for the family and awarded $5,625,000. Judgment was entered jointly and severally against Michelle S. Knolla, M.D. and Obstetricians-Gynecologists, P.C., trading as the OB/GYN Group.
One detail is worth noting because the case name misleads. The jury found for the other physicians and for Perinatal Associates, and the trial court had directed a verdict for Methodist Hospital. So despite the case being reported as Gourley v. Nebraska Methodist Health System, the hospital paid nothing.
The district court then entered judgment at $1,250,000, the cap in force for a 1993 occurrence under section 44-2825 as it then read.
The family attacked the cap on five separate constitutional grounds. On 16 May 2003 the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed, upholding the statute against every one of them. That decision is the reason Nebraska's cap survived for two decades, and it is why the state's largest medical verdicts continue to be written down to it. Whether it still survives is now before the same court in a case tried nearly twenty years later.
The family was represented by Daniel B. Cullan and Paul W. Madgett of Cullan and Cullan, with John Vail. Daniel B. Cullan is the founding generation of the firm, not the brothers who tried the later cases on this list.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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A child was born at Bellevue Medical Center in November 2012 after a long labor and was not breathing at birth. She survived with severe brain damage and by trial could not walk or talk and had limited vision. A federal jury awarded $17 million. The statutory cap reduced it to $1.75 million and the Eighth Circuit affirmed.
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