The Jury Awarded $5.6 Million for a Brain-Injured Newborn. Nebraska's Cap Cut It to $1.25 Million, and the State Supreme Court Rejected Five Separate Constitutional Attacks on It.
After trial: Final, and it is the decision that made the cap durable. The jury returned $5,625,000 in the District Court for Douglas County; the district court entered judgment against the two liable defendants at the section 44-2825 limit for a 1993 occurrence, $1,250,000 under the statute as it then read in the 1998 Reissue; and on 16 May 2003 the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed in No. S-00-679, reported at 265 Neb. 918, 663 N.W.2d 43, rejecting a five-ground constitutional attack on the cap. Note for readers of the case name: the jury found for the other physicians and for Perinatal Associates and the trial court directed a verdict for Methodist Hospital, so the hospital named in the reported caption paid nothing; judgment ran jointly and severally against Michelle S. Knolla, M.D. and Obstetricians-Gynecologists, P.C. The cap upheld here is now itself under constitutional challenge before the Nebraska Supreme Court in a later case argued 30 April 2025 and undecided. Nebraska's medical-malpractice cap is unlike almost any other, and it is the reason three of these figures look small beside their verdicts. Neb. Rev. Stat. section 44-2825 caps TOTAL damages, economic included, not just non-economic damages: $1,250,000 for 1993 to 2003, $1,750,000 for 2004 to 2014, and $2,250,000 for occurrences on or after 1 January 2015. The provider's own layer is capped below that and the state Excess Liability Fund pays the balance, which is why the State of Nebraska appears as an intervenor in these cases. Nebraska also bars punitive damages outright as unconstitutional under article VII section 5 of its constitution, so no Nebraska award contains a punitive component to strip out.
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.
- 1.Gourley v. Nebraska Methodist Health System, Inc., 265 Neb. 918, 663 N.W.2d 43 (16 May 2003), No. S-00-679: the Douglas County venue, the $5,625,000 verdict and its reduction to the $1,250,000 statutory cap for a 1993 occurrence, the affirmance against a five-ground constitutional challenge, the entry of judgment jointly and severally against Michelle S. Knolla, M.D. and Obstetricians-Gynecologists, P.C. with the other physicians and Perinatal Associates found not liable and a directed verdict for Methodist Hospital, and the counsel block reading 'Daniel B. Cullan and Paul W. Madgett, of Cullan & Cullan, and John Vail for appellees Colin M. Gourley et al.'
- 2.Neb. Rev. Stat. section 44-2825, the total-damages cap and the $1,250,000 tier applicable to a 1993 occurrence
More proven verdicts from Cullan & Cullan LLC
All Cullan & Cullan LLC proven verdicts →A Jackson County jury awarded a Kansas City-area family $25.4 million after finding an OB-GYN's improper supervision and excessive Pitocin use during delivery caused their daughter's cerebral palsy, though the verdict was reduced to a final judgment of $20,824,653 under Missouri's statutory cap on noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases.
Billy Moyle, 24, was driving behind a Mack concrete truck on US Highway 75 near Nebraska City on Halloween 2012. The truck moved into the left turn lane and then turned right across his path, running his pickup off the road. He suffered a broken vertebra and a partially severed spinal cord.
At about eleven months old, a child suffered brain trauma in an accidental fall at day care, was taken to a hospital in Omaha and discharged without adequate management of her seizures. The seizures continued and caused permanent brain damage. The jury awarded $26.1 million. The statutory cap reduced it to $2.25 million.
A child was born at Bellevue Medical Center in November 2012 after a long labour 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.
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.