Heath & Heath, P.C.

A Cook County jury awarded Joseph and Christine Browning $49.25 million after physicians at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital waited 11 days to perform exploratory surgery on a sepsis infection that destroyed most of Joseph's small bowel. Sharon L. Heath and Timothy W. Heath of Heath & Heath, P.C. represented the Brownings, and the Illinois Appellate Court affirmed the verdict in 2023.

A Cook County jury awarded $10,944,000 in 1997 to a newborn girl left with extreme and permanent neurological damage after Lake Forest Hospital failed to provide any mechanism for getting a description of her placenta into her chart and had no policy for monitoring the blood pressure of stressed newborns, delaying treatment for blood she had lost before delivery. The trial court reduced the verdict to $9,644,000 to credit a prior $1,300,000 settlement with other defendants, then wiped out the award entirely by granting the hospital judgment notwithstanding the verdict and ordering a new trial. In June 2000, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed both rulings, reinstated the $9,644,000 judgment, and denied the hospital's conditional request to cut the award further. Terrence K. Hegarty, William J. Harte, Timothy W. Heath and Joan M. Nannix represented the family; Heath is now a named partner at Heath & Heath, P.C.