$207.6 Million Verdict for Child Born With Cerebral Palsy After Penn Hospital Delayed C-Section
After trial: The Pennsylvania Superior Court unanimously affirmed the $207.6 million verdict in full on July 10, 2025, rejecting the hospital's arguments on vicarious liability and remittitur. Reargument was denied that September, and it remained unclear whether the hospital would seek further review from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Won by Gilman & Bedigian.
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.
What happened
On February 22, 2018, a woman admitted to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was in labor when physicians identified a uterine infection. Despite that diagnosis, the care team waited approximately 45 minutes before performing a cesarean section. The newborn emerged with severe brain injuries.
The child was ultimately diagnosed with cerebral palsy and significant neurodevelopmental delays. By the time of trial, the child required complete assistance from caregivers for daily functioning. HUP maintained in its defense that the injury had already occurred before the mother reached the emergency department and that the care provided was appropriate.
H. Briggs Bedigian and E. Merritt Lentz of Gilman and Bedigian, along with co-counsel from Kline and Specter, tried the case in Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas. The plaintiff's team presented evidence that the 45-minute delay in surgical delivery, in the context of a documented uterine infection, directly caused the child's oxygen deprivation and resulting brain damage. They also disputed the hospital's characterization of the child's condition, presenting evidence the child was not in a vegetative state as HUP had argued.
On April 21, 2023, the jury returned a verdict of $182.7 million, at the time the largest medical malpractice verdict ever recorded in Pennsylvania. HUP moved for dismissal, a new trial, and remittitur. In January 2024, Judge Gwendolyn N. Bright rejected all three motions, leaving the verdict intact. HUP appealed to the Pennsylvania Superior Court.
With post-verdict interest, the total judgment grew to $207.6 million. On July 10, 2025, a unanimous Superior Court panel affirmed the full judgment, finding the award did not shock the conscience given the trial evidence. The verdict remains the largest medical malpractice judgment in Pennsylvania history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Philadelphia Inquirer: 'A record medical malpractice verdict goes against the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania' (Apr. 26, 2023)·Archived copy
- 2.Philadelphia Inquirer: 'Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania malpractice verdict upheld' (Jan. 29, 2024)·Archived copy
- 3.Stanford Law School press coverage: Superior Court upholds $207.6M birth injury judgment against Penn Hospital (Jul. 2025)·Archived copy
- 4.Law360: 'Penn Hospital Can't Escape Record $207M Med Mal Judgment' (Jul. 2025)
More proven verdicts from Gilman & Bedigian
All Gilman & Bedigian proven verdicts →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 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.
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.