$29 Million Verdict for Cerebral Palsy After Midwife Failed to Call the OB in a Fetal Heart-Rate Crisis

During labor at a Hudson, Wisconsin, hospital, the fetal heart monitor showed the unborn boy's heart rate drop from the 150s to the 60s. Under the applicable standard of care, that reading required the certified nurse-midwife overseeing the delivery to immediately contact the on-call obstetrician-gynecologist. She did not.

The delay lasted close to an hour. When the boy was finally delivered, he received Apgar scores of 0 at the one-minute, five-minute, and ten-minute marks, meaning evaluators detected no detectable heart rate, respiratory effort, muscle tone, reflex, or color at any of those intervals. He spent more than two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. The diagnosis that followed was cerebral palsy, leaving him with severe motor impairment, an inability to speak, and a lifetime dependence on supervised care, including surgical placement of a gastrostomy feeding tube.

His family retained Goldenberg Lauricella, PLLC, of Minneapolis. Attorneys Noah Lauricella and Stuart Goldenberg, along with colleagues Ethan Adams and Cyle Hartwig, built the case around a detailed reconstruction of the labor timeline and a body of peer-reviewed medical literature addressing what causes hypoxic-ischemic brain injury in newborns. Nine expert witnesses testified during the plaintiffs' case alone, covering nursing standards, obstetric practice, neurology, and future life-care costs.

The jury in Jennings v. Cox found that nurse-midwife Robyn Cox and her employer, Hudson Physicians S.C., breached the standard of care. The panel awarded $14 million for projected future medical and care expenses, $10 million for future pain, suffering, disability, and disfigurement, and $2 million for loss of society and companionship, reaching a total verdict of $29,070,051.

Wisconsin law caps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases at $750,000 per occurrence. The $10 million pain-and-suffering award and the $2 million for loss of society and companionship are noneconomic and subject to that cap, so the collectible amount for those categories is reduced substantially. The $14 million in future medical expenses is economic and not subject to that cap, though Wisconsin pays future medical costs in these cases through its Injured Patients and Families Compensation Fund. No entered judgment has been reported.