The Clinic Documented the Signs of Abuse on Her Infant Son and Never Told Her, and Never Told the State. He Was Beaten Nearly to Death at Six Months Old.
After trial: Approved by the court and final at $8,000,000. A tentative figure of $10,000,000 was announced in February 2022 and widely reported at that number; the settlement actually approved and announced in August 2022 was $8,000,000, and that is the figure that stood. No source we found explains the gap between the two. Most of the money funds a lifetime care trust paying roughly $17,000 a month. Maine's Wrongful Death Act caps do not apply because the child survived, and the Maine Tort Claims Act cap does not apply because the defendant was the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act rather than a Maine governmental entity.
Won by Garmey Law.
Alexandria Orduna brought her son to a Brewer clinic repeatedly from the time he was four days old. Staff saw and documented red-flag signs of physical abuse and never told her and never reported it to the state, as Maine law requires. At about six and a half months old he was beaten so badly he nearly died. He is permanently blind and brain-injured.
What happened
Alexandria Orduna, then living in Orono, Maine, began bringing her son to Brewer Medical Center when he was four days old. She kept bringing him back.
The suit alleged that clinic staff saw and documented red-flag signs that the baby was being physically abused by Orduna's then-boyfriend, and that they never told her and never reported it to the state, which Maine law requires them to do.
On January 10, 2019, when the boy was about six and a half months old, he was beaten so severely that he nearly died. The emergency department at Eastern Maine Medical Center found a fractured skull, bleeding in the brain and a fractured left femur. He is permanently blind and permanently brain-injured.
The boyfriend pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and assault on a child and was sentenced to nine years with four to serve.
The reason this was a federal case is worth explaining. Brewer Medical Center is operated by Penobscot Community Health Care, a federally qualified health center, which makes its staff federal employees for liability purposes. So the claim ran against the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The government argued that health care providers owe no duty to report suspected child abuse. Judge Lance E. Walker rejected that, and that ruling is what made the case survivable at all.
As Terry Garmey put it to reporters, the child's body told the story like a cave painting there to be seen, interpreted and investigated, and it did not happen.
A tentative settlement of $10 million was announced in February 2022. The settlement finally approved in August 2022 was $8 million, most of it funding a lifetime care trust that pays out about $17,000 a month.
Orduna was represented by Terry D. Garmey and Alexis Garmey Chardon of Portland. Her son is not named here because he is a child.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Bangor Daily News, Feb. 28, 2022: the federal government would pay the Orono mother after the clinic did not tell her about the abuse of her infant son; the District of Maine venue at Bangor, the single mother suing on behalf of herself and her injured son, the visits from four days old, the documented signs never reported, the January 10, 2019 beating and the fractured skull, brain bleeding and fractured femur, and Garmey and Chardon as counsel
- 2.WGME: the federal government will pay the Orono mother $8 million, the final approved figure and the payment structure funding a lifetime care trust; also names Garmey and Chardon
- 3.News Center Maine (archived): the tentative $10 million settlement with the federal government, and the boyfriend's guilty plea to aggravated assault and assault on a child with a nine-year sentence, four to serve
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