$20 Million Verdict for Wrong-Side Brain Surgery on a Boy, Judgment Entered at $11 Million
After trial: Affirmed. The jury returned $20,000,000 on September 24, 2010 and judgment was entered at $11,000,000, the insurer's policy limit and the ceiling under Arkansas's direct-action statute, not a finding of excessiveness.
Won by Davis, Bethune & Jones, L.L.C..
A 15-year-old boy went into Arkansas Children's Hospital for surgery to remove the brain tissue causing his seizures. The surgeon opened the wrong side of his head and removed healthy tissue before turning to the correct side. His parents were not told, and learned of it more than a year later during an unrelated examination.
What happened
In August 2004 a 15-year-old boy was admitted to Arkansas Children's Hospital for a procedure intended to make his life easier. He had seizures, and the plan was to remove the brain tissue generating them so that he could reduce his medication.
The surgeon, Dr. Badih Adada, opened the wrong side of his head. He removed tissue from that side, healthy tissue, before turning to the side he was supposed to be operating on.
Nobody told the family. According to the Arkansas State Claims Commission, staff at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences fraudulently concealed the facts of the surgery. His parents found out roughly fifteen to eighteen months later, and only because of an unrelated examination. He now lives in a rehabilitation center.
Arkansas Children's Hospital is charitably immune from suit, which in most states would end the matter. Arkansas has a direct-action statute, Ark. Code Ann. 23-79-210, that lets a plaintiff sue a charitably immune defendant's liability insurer instead. So the family sued ProAssurance Indemnity Company.
The Pulaski County jury deliberated for under two hours and returned $20,000,000.
What happened next is worth stating precisely, because it is easy to describe wrongly. The circuit court cut the judgment to $11,000,000. That was not a remittitur, and no court ever held the jury's $20 million excessive. It was the ceiling of ProAssurance's coverage, and the direct-action statute reaches only the policy. Eleven million dollars was all the insurance there was.
Both sides appealed. ProAssurance wanted a new trial or a reallocation of blame. The Methenys wanted the full $20 million restored. On December 13, 2012 the Arkansas Supreme Court rejected both, finding no errors in the actions of the circuit court. Separate recoveries of $1,000,000 from the surgeon and $500,000 from UAMS were reported alongside.
Pamela and Kenny Metheny, suing individually and as their son's co-conservators, were represented by Phillip J. Duncan of The Duncan Firm in Little Rock, with Grant L. Davis and Thomas C. Jones of Davis, Bethune and Jones as co-counsel and Brian G. Brooks on the appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Davis, Bethune & Jones, L.L.C.
All Davis, Bethune & Jones, L.L.C. proven verdicts →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.
A St. Louis jury awarded $28 million in compensatory damages and $149 million in punitive damages to Shannon Dugan, a New Jersey sheriff's deputy who was sexually assaulted by a Hyatt security guard who used his master key to enter her hotel room while she slept. The Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed the full award in December 2024.
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.