Jury Awards $400,000 to Boy With Permanent Arm Nerve Injury From Forceps Delivery in Indiana
After trial: The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the verdict on May 11, 2001, and we found no further appeal. We could not confirm whether the judgment was paid.
Won by Hovde Dassow + Deets.
A jury found an Indiana obstetrician liable for a permanent brachial plexus injury to a newborn's left arm during a forceps delivery in 1989. The jury awarded $400,000. The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed in May 2001, rejecting challenges to jury instructions, discovery rulings, evidence and the causation finding.
What happened
An Indiana jury awarded $400,000 to a boy who suffered a permanent brachial plexus injury to his left arm during a forceps delivery, and the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the verdict in a published opinion on May 11, 2001. F. Boyd Hovde and Nicholas C. Deets, of the Hovde Law Firm in Indianapolis, represented the family.
The boy was born on November 30, 1989, weighing ten pounds, ten ounces. Because of his size, the delivery was difficult. The obstetrician, Dr. David R. Potts, used forceps to pull on the baby's head and braced his knee against the mother to gain leverage. Afterward the baby's left arm hung limp. Dr. Potts diagnosed a broken collarbone and a brachial plexus injury, the damage to the network of nerves that controls the shoulder, arm and hand.
As he grew, the boy could barely use his left arm. He could not feed or dress himself, and he could not play sports with his friends. At age ten he had two reconstructive surgeries that improved the strength and range of motion in his left shoulder and hand, though the function of the shoulder, arm and hand remained impaired.
The family took the claim through Indiana's medical review process before going to court. The medical review panel unanimously concluded that Dr. Potts had failed to meet the applicable standard of care and that his conduct was a factor in producing the injury. That finding became part of the evidence at trial. Dr. Potts moved twice for judgment on the evidence, arguing the family had not proved that his conduct caused the injury, and the trial court denied both motions. The case turned on causation: the defense expert, Dr. James Nocon, had testified in other shoulder dystocia cases, and the child's lawyers cross-examined him on that earlier testimony.
The jury returned a verdict for the boy of $400,000.
Dr. Potts appealed on five grounds. He challenged the trial court's refusal of a tendered instruction on complications and bad results, its denial of his request to compel the family's lawyers to hand over materials they used to cross-examine his expert, its handling of a jury request to see the instructions, its admission of the parties' medical review panel submissions, and its denial of his motion on causation. The Court of Appeals rejected each argument. It held the instruction was unnecessary given the panel opinion and the instructions already given, that the cross-examination materials were protected work product the doctor could have gathered himself, that he had waived the jury-request issue by not objecting, and that he could not show harm from the panel submissions because nothing showed the jury ever saw them. On causation, it found enough evidence to support the verdict.
The court affirmed the $400,000 judgment in Potts v. Williams, 746 N.E.2d 1000.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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