$34.1 Million Verdict Against CoxHealth for a Birth Injury Tied to Excessive Pitocin at a Springfield Hospital
After trial: Missouri's damages cap did not apply because the 2015 cap statute postdated the 2014 injury. No appeal was reported and the funds were paid into a special needs trust in 2022.
Won by Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci.
A Greene County jury awarded $34,107,628 to a boy who suffered permanent brain damage during his 2014 birth at Cox South hospital in Springfield, where escalating doses of the labor drug Pitocin deprived him of oxygen. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict in Missouri in 2021, and because the injury predated the state's 2015 damages cap statute, the noneconomic award stood without reduction.
What happened
On September 24, 2014, a Springfield woman arrived at Cox South hospital, part of the Lester E. Cox Medical Centers system, for a scheduled induction of labor. Staff administered the labor induction drug Pitocin in increasing doses. Her contractions became so frequent and severe that her baby was deprived of oxygen in the womb. The lawsuit alleged that fetal heart tracings showed decelerations signaling hypoxia and that the medical team failed to respond appropriately, leading to an acute hypoxic event that damaged the newborn's brain. The suit further alleged that nursing staff compounded the harm afterward by attempting to feed the infant from a cup he could not handle.
The boy was left with permanent brain damage, quadriplegia, and cerebral palsy. He is unable to crawl or walk, suffers from cognitive impairment, and will need care for the rest of his life.
His mother brought suit against CoxHealth as his next friend in Greene County Circuit Court, case number 1831-CC00378, filed in 2018. The boy was six years old by the time the case reached a jury. Roger Johnson and Scott Vorhees of Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci tried the case before Judge Jason Brown, with the hospital defended by Brian Malkmus and Jared Robertson of the Malkmus Law Firm. After a ten day trial, the jury returned its verdict on March 3, 2021: $34,107,628 in total. The award broke down to $417,628 in past economic damages, $3 million in past noneconomic damages, $14.5 million in future medical damages, $5.39 million in future economic damages, and $10.8 million in future noneconomic damages.
The $13.8 million in combined noneconomic damages exceeded the limits of Missouri's statutory cap for medical malpractice cases. The cap did not apply here. The statute took effect in 2015, a year after the boy's birth, so the verdict stood without reduction. CoxHealth said in a statement that it was deeply sorry any time such an incident occurs, that it stood behind its teams and the care provided, and that while it disagreed with the jury's verdict it respected the judicial process.
Missouri Lawyers Weekly ranked the award as the largest medical malpractice verdict in the state in 2021, and the National Law Journal listed it as the 58th largest jury verdict in the United States that year. By the spring of 2022 the money had been paid into a special needs trust for the boy. His family used part of it to buy a specialized medical bed and a wheelchair accessible van.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Missouri Lawyers Media: Jury awards large verdict to child with brain damage·Archived copy
- 2.KY3: Greene County jury awards $34 million malpractice verdict in case against CoxHealth·Archived copy
- 3.KY3: Family awarded $34 million in damages from lawsuit against CoxHealth·Archived copy
- 4.Springfield Business Journal: Verdict against CoxHealth named 58th largest in 2021 by law journal·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci
All Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci proven verdicts →Kara Hansen was a 16-year-old Riverton, Kansas high school student when Corbin Hamilton rear-ended her 1966 Ford Mustang in Cherokee County on April 9, 2014, breaking her neck and leaving her paralyzed from the chest down. After a five-day trial in Cherokee County District Court, a jury found Hamilton fully at fault and awarded Hansen $38.5 million, including $18 million for future medical and life-care costs and $18 million in noneconomic damages. Kansas's statutory cap on noneconomic damages, which applied to claims arising before July 1, 2014 and was not struck down until more than a year after this trial, held that portion of the award to $250,000, putting the judgment that could be entered at roughly $20.75 million. Hamilton carried only a small liability insurance policy, leaving full recovery in doubt.
Mary Hunt sued Dr. Larry Clark and Freeman Health System after forceps used during her son's 2016 delivery caused bleeding deep in his brain and a stroke that damaged the left hemisphere. A Jasper County jury found both defendants negligent after an eight-day trial in Joplin and returned $7,688,861.10 on September 17, 2019. Before the verdict came in, both sides had agreed to settle within a range keyed to whatever number the jury chose, so the amount the family actually received stayed confidential.
A Greene County jury found three doctors and Lester E. Cox Medical Centers liable after a mother who reported reduced fetal movement was sent home without fetal monitoring, and her son was born with severe brain damage and cerebral palsy. The jury awarded $1.45 million in non-economic damages and about $3.37 million in future medical expenses. The trial court cut the non-economic award to the statutory cap, but the Missouri Supreme Court struck the cap in 2012 and the full verdict stood.
A Greene County jury found that Dr. Chandria Johnson's delivery maneuvers, rather than the natural forces of labor, caused a brachial plexus nerve injury to a newborn boy identified as K.L. during his November 2014 birth at a Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities facility. Despite six corrective surgeries, the boy was left with permanent weakness in his arm. The jury returned a verdict of $2,348,338.60 against Mercy Clinic Springfield Communities and Dr. Johnson, and because the injury predated Missouri's 2015 noneconomic damages cap statute, the noneconomic award was not subject to a cap.
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.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.