$34 Million Verdict for Infant Brain-Damaged by Unjustified 23-Week C-Section
After trial: Post-cap; $34 million jury verdict.
Won by Gilman & Bedigian.
A Baltimore County jury found that University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center performed an unjustified emergency cesarean section on a mother showing no confirmed signs of labor, delivering her son at 23 weeks and causing severe brain damage that will require lifelong care.
What happened
On December 13, 2018, Tara Anderson came to University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson complaining of lower abdominal cramping and back pain. The medical tests given to her that day showed no placental abruption and no confirmed signs of preterm labor. Despite those findings, hospital staff diagnosed her with preterm labor and fetal distress. Physicians proceeded to perform an emergency cesarean section. Her son was delivered at 23 weeks gestation.
Children born at 23 weeks face extraordinary odds. The delivery caused severe brain damage, and the boy was left with permanent neurological injuries requiring continuous, lifelong medical care. Court records identified the mother as Tara Anderson, acting as guardian on behalf of her minor son.
Attorneys Jon S. Stefanuca and H. Briggs Bedigian of Gilman and Bedigian LLC took the case to trial in Baltimore County Circuit Court. The two-week proceeding centered on whether the clinical picture on December 13, 2018 actually justified the intervention. Plaintiff counsel presented evidence that the operative note documented no further contractions after admission, directly contradicting the fetal distress diagnosis. The jury also considered a claim that the hospital failed to obtain informed consent before proceeding with the surgery.
On March 28, 2023, the jury returned a verdict of $33,915,000. The breakdown: $20 million for future medical expenses, $3 million for lost earning capacity, $915,000 for past medical expenses, and $10 million for pain and suffering. Under Maryland's statutory cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, the pain-and-suffering portion was reduced to approximately $1.3 million, bringing the total judgment to roughly $25.2 million. The economic damages, which account for the bulk of the award, were not subject to reduction.
The defendants were University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center LLC, attending physician Dr. Eshanjit Sapra, and Capital Women's Care LLC. The hospital was represented by Christina N. Billiet and Neal M. Brown of Waranch and Brown LLC; Dr. Sapra was represented by Nicholas Szokoly of Murphy, Falcon and Murphy.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Gilman & Bedigian
All Gilman & Bedigian proven verdicts →A Philadelphia jury returned a $182.7 million verdict, later reaching $207.6 million with interest and upheld through the Pennsylvania Superior Court in July 2025, against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania for a 45-minute delay in performing a C-section on a mother with a known uterine infection, leaving her child with permanent cerebral palsy.
A Philadelphia jury awarded $108.6 million to a boy who suffered permanent brain damage during a December 2018 forceps delivery at Einstein Medical Center, in a case tried by Gilman & Bedigian against Jefferson Health. Jefferson has vowed to appeal, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is already reviewing the same liability doctrines in the firm's earlier $183 million Penn Medicine verdict, so the award is far from final.
A Baltimore City jury awarded $55 million after Johns Hopkins Hospital delayed an emergency cesarean section for more than two hours following a home-birth transfer, leaving infant Enzo Martinez with permanent cerebral palsy and profound neurological injuries.
A Baltimore City jury returned a $21 million verdict against MedStar Harbor Hospital after physicians failed to perform a timely emergency cesarean section during a premature delivery, causing a newborn to suffer oxygen deprivation and permanent spastic diplegic cerebral palsy.
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.