$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
- 2.KY3: Greene County jury awards $34 million malpractice verdict in case against CoxHealth
- 3.KY3: Family awarded $34 million in damages from lawsuit against CoxHealth
- 4.Springfield Business Journal: Verdict against CoxHealth named 58th largest in 2021 by law journal
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.
A Kansas City jury awarded ovarian cancer patient Georgia Hayes $225 million in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages against pharmacist Robert Courtney, who had diluted chemotherapy drugs for profit. The trial judge later reduced the award to roughly $330 million, and Hayes collected almost nothing from Courtney himself, whose assets had been seized by the federal government. Courtney was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison, and drug makers Eli Lilly and Bristol-Myers Squibb later paid $71 million to settle victims' claims.