Scott Vorhees

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.

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.