Jury Awards $818,000 After Nerve Injury in a Child's Hip Surgery at a Huntsville Hospital
After trial: The Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed the judgment against the hospital on March 7, 1997, rejecting its statute of limitations and evidentiary arguments. We could not confirm the trial date or whether the judgment was paid.
Won by Hare Wynn Newell & Newton.
A nine-year-old girl's sciatic nerve was injured during hip surgery at Crestwood Hospital in Huntsville, Alabama in 1990. Her parents sued the hospital's operator, alleging an inadequately trained operating room technician. A jury awarded $818,000 in compensatory damages against the hospital and found for the surgeon's practice. The Alabama Supreme Court affirmed on March 7, 1997.
What happened
On October 28, 1990, a nine-year-old girl underwent hip surgery at Crestwood Hospital in Huntsville, Alabama. The operation was performed by an orthopaedic surgeon employed by Orthopaedic Associates of North Alabama. During the procedure her left sciatic nerve was injured. A jury later returned a verdict of $818,000 in compensatory damages against the hospital's operator, HealthTrust, Inc., which did business as Crestwood Hospital.
The injury did not end with the operation. The girl needed several further surgeries in attempts to repair the nerve damage, and she had to learn to walk again. According to the Alabama Supreme Court's account of the trial record, she was left with a permanent, severe limp, along with numbness and disfigurement of her left leg and foot.
Her parents sued on her behalf in Madison County Circuit Court in July 1993. Their theory was that the nerve was hurt either by the surgeon's scalpel or by the misplaced use of retractors, the instruments that hold tissue aside during surgery. They also pointed to the operating room technician who assisted, and argued that the hospital had failed to train him properly for that work. Shay Samples and Bruce J. McKee of Hare, Wynn, Newell & Newton in Birmingham represented the family.
The case went to a jury against both the hospital and the surgeon's practice. The jury found for the family against the hospital and for the practice against the family. That left the hospital's training and staffing of its operating room staff as the basis of liability. The family's standard-of-care testimony came from a registered nurse who had run surgical departments at a Memphis medical center and held offices in a national association of operating room nurses. She testified that nothing in the records showed the technician had received any formal training process or skills checklist before assisting in the surgery.
HealthTrust appealed and raised several points. It argued the claims were time-barred because the complaint was captioned in the parents' names as next friends. The Supreme Court disagreed. The suit concerned only the girl's injury, and for a minor in a medical liability case Alabama allows four years from the act complained of; the suit was filed about two years and nine months after the surgery. The hospital also challenged its nurse-expert's qualifications, the use of the surgeon's deposition, a nursing practice publication admitted into evidence, and the denial of its post-trial motion built on juror affidavits. The court found no reversible error on any of them. On the deposition, it noted the hospital had not objected until after the testimony was read to the jury.
On March 7, 1997, the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed the judgment against the hospital in HealthTrust, Inc. v. Cantrell, 689 So. 2d 822. The family agreed to drop its cross appeal from the verdict for the surgeon's practice once the judgment against the hospital was affirmed, and the court dismissed it.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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