$108.6 Million Verdict Against Jefferson Health for a Boy Brain-Injured in a Forceps Delivery at Einstein, With Supreme Court Review Looming Over the Appeal
After trial: Post-trial motions are pending and Jefferson has said it will appeal. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court review granted in July 2026 in Hagans v. HUP raises the same legal issues and is likely to frame this appeal.
Won by Gilman & Bedigian.
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.
What happened
A boy identified in court filings only as K.J. was born at Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia in December 2018, in a delivery his family says went wrong in its final minutes. Forceps were used to bring him out, and according to the complaint, that use of forceps never made it into the medical record. He was left with damage to the areas of the brain that govern cognitive and intellectual function, and the damage is permanent.
By the time the case reached trial, he was seven and a half years old. E. Merritt Lentz and Briggs Bedigian of Gilman & Bedigian LLC tried the case in Judge Caroline Turner's courtroom in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, pursuing Jefferson Health and a pediatric practice Jefferson had acquired along with the Einstein Healthcare Network. The jury found an Einstein Pediatrics physician responsible for the boy's injuries. Lentz put the child's future to the jurors in plain terms: he will grow into adolescence, into a young man, into an adult, but he will retain the brain of essentially a toddler.
On March 20, 2026, the jury returned a verdict of $108.6 million. It awarded $1.4 million for pain and suffering, $1 million for lost earning capacity, and $106.1 million for future medical and related expenses across a projected additional life span of 68 years. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Philadelphia since a $183 million birth injury award against Penn Medicine, a case the same two Gilman & Bedigian lawyers also tried and won.
The verdict is not final, and that caveat belongs at the front of any account of this case. Jefferson Health said it strongly disagrees with the outcome, arguing that the jury was not permitted to hear crucial evidence and that liability rested on theories not supported by the medical record. The health system has said it will appeal and expects the verdict to be overturned.
The appellate stakes are higher than a routine post-trial fight. On July 29, 2026, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court granted allowance of appeal in Hagans v. Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the firm's $183 million Penn Medicine verdict. The justices agreed to decide whether a hospital may be held vicariously liable without an express jury finding against a specific named agent, and whether a jury may find liability based on either factual causation or an increased risk of harm. Those are the same doctrines that decide hospital birth injury cases like this one, and the court's answers will likely frame the appeal of the Einstein verdict. That review is pending, which means the legal ground under both of the firm's landmark Philadelphia awards is being tested at the same time. For now the family holds a verdict, not a payment.
What is not in dispute is the arithmetic the jury accepted: $106.1 million of the award exists because K.J. is expected to need medical care and support every year for the next 68.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Philadelphia Inquirer: Jefferson Health hit with $108.6 million verdict in Einstein birth injury case
- 2.Duane Morris Appellate Review: Pa. Supreme Court to review vicarious liability and increased risk of harm (Hagans allocatur, July 29, 2026)
- 3.HealthLeaders Media: Jefferson Health hit with $108.6M verdict in Einstein birth injury case
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 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.
A Kansas City jury awarded ovarian cancer patient Georgia Hayes $225 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages against pharmacist Robert Courtney, who had diluted chemotherapy drugs for profit. The trial judge later reduced the award to roughly $330 million, and Hayes collected almost nothing from Courtney himself, whose assets had been seized by the federal government. Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, and drug makers Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb later paid $71 million to settle victims' claims.