$31.5 Million Verdict, an Arizona Record, After a Hospital Kept Raising Pitocin While a Baby's Heart Rate Signaled Distress
After trial: Banner Health's motion for a new trial was denied by the trial judge on April 23, 2024. No confirmed appellate outcome has been reported since.
Won by Dordick Law Corporation.
A Maricopa County jury found Banner Health and physician Dr. Laurie Erickson negligent in the 2014 delivery of Greyson Griepentrog, who suffered oxygen deprivation and cerebral palsy after nurses kept increasing his mother's Pitocin dose despite fetal heart tracings showing distress, and returned a $31,550,825 verdict, the largest medical malpractice award in Arizona history.
What happened
Krystle Griepentrog went into labor at Banner University Medical Center Phoenix in 2014 with her son Greyson. To strengthen her contractions, the hospital's staff administered Pitocin, a synthetic form of the hormone oxytocin that is common in labor and delivery but carries a known risk: too much of it can overstimulate the uterus and cut off a baby's oxygen supply during contractions.
The fetal heart monitor tracked Greyson's condition throughout labor, and at trial the plaintiffs argued that the tracing began showing signs consistent with oxygen deprivation well before he was born. Banner's own safety policy, according to the case presented to the jury, called for nurses to turn the Pitocin down or off when a tracing looked like that. Instead, the nurses turned it up. Dr. Laurie Erickson, the physician overseeing the delivery, did not intervene to stop it or move to an emergency cesarean section.
Greyson was born with severe, permanent brain damage from the oxygen deprivation. He developed cerebral palsy, a lifelong neurological condition affecting his movement and muscle control. By the time the case went to trial in the fall of 2023, he was nine years old and living with his mother in Chandler, Arizona.
The case, filed in April 2020, took more than three years to reach a jury, and a dispute over the evidence became part of the story itself. Banner told the court that the fetal heart monitor strip, the primary record of what happened to Greyson during labor, had been lost. The plaintiffs' attorneys argued that no one on either side had ever encountered a case where that record simply went missing, and used the gap to press their theory of what the hospital was trying not to show.
Dordick Law Corporation attorneys Gary Dordick and Christopher Bulone tried the case for the Griepentrog family, with Brian Snyder of Snyder & Wenner serving as co-counsel; Snyder delivered the opening statement and handled much of the expert witness examination. Banner Health denied responsibility throughout the litigation and did not make a settlement offer before trial.
On November 17, 2023, after a trial that ran from late October, the jury returned a unanimous verdict of $31,550,825, apportioning 57 percent of the fault to Banner Health and 43 percent to Dr. Erickson. It stood as the largest medical malpractice verdict in Arizona's history. Because the verdict exceeded a pretrial settlement offer the family had made, Arizona's offer-of-judgment rules added further interest and fees on top of the jury's award.
Banner Health asked the trial judge to order a new trial, arguing the verdict could not be supported by the evidence. On April 23, 2024, the judge denied the motion, writing that the verdict was supported by the evidence presented at trial. No public reporting has surfaced a further appeal or a final resolution of collection since that ruling.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Daily Journal: coverage naming Dordick Law Corporation as trial counsel and confirming the record verdict
- 2.AZFamily (KTVK/KPHO): local news report on the verdict, the Pitocin allegations, and the fault apportionment
- 3.KVOA: follow-up report describing Banner's refusal to settle and the missing fetal monitor strip
- 4.Snyder & Wenner: firm statement confirming the April 23, 2024 denial of Banner's motion for a new trial
- 5.Dordick Law Corporation (firm)
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Related medical malpractice verdicts
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