Jury Values the Death of a 68-Year-Old Who Bled Out During Elective Abdominal Surgery at $20 Million, With 15 Percent Assigned to the Anesthesia Group That Went to Trial

Scott Stillwell Wilson was 68 years old, healthy and active, when he checked into Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut, in 2019 for an elective abdominal operation. The surgery ran about six hours. During it, according to the lawsuit his family later filed, Wilson was bleeding steadily, and the anesthesia personnel responsible for monitoring him did not recognize or respond to the signs: his blood pressure fell, he went into hemorrhagic shock, and he suffered cardiac arrest and respiratory failure. He was not adequately resuscitated. Wilson died a few hours after the operation ended, from blood loss.

His daughter, Heather Rueda, sued as administrator of his estate. The complaint named two defendants: Middlesex Hospital, whose staff were in the operating room, and Anesthesiologists of Middletown, P.C., the private group that provided the anesthesia care. The case was tried in Connecticut Superior Court in Bridgeport. Before trial, the hospital reached a confidential agreement with the estate and was withdrawn from the case, so the only defendant in front of the jury was the anesthesia group. Kelly A. Fitzpatrick of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder tried the case for the estate. Ellen M. Costello of Del Sole & Del Sole and Thomas Cotter of the Cotter Law Firm defended the anesthesiologists.

Fitzpatrick's theme was vigilance. The anesthesia team, she told the jury, are the eyes and ears of an unconscious patient and the guardians of his vital signs, and in this operating room they were asleep at the wheel. The estate's anesthesiology expert walked the jury through the basics: why blood pressure has to be watched continuously during a long operation, how bleeding is recognized, and why a surgical team has to respond to blood loss immediately so the patient never falls behind. Fitzpatrick said afterward that the medicine was terribly complex and the jury understood it.

On July 10, 2025, the jury returned a verdict of $20 million: $15 million for Wilson's loss of enjoyment of life and $5 million for his death. Connecticut law lets a jury apportion fault to a defendant that settled before trial, and this jury did. It found Middlesex Hospital 85 percent responsible and Anesthesiologists of Middletown 15 percent responsible. The verdict against the anesthesia group was therefore $3 million, on top of whatever the hospital paid under its confidential settlement.

Middlesex Health issued a statement noting that it had been withdrawn from the suit before trial and was not part of the verdict, and adding that its hearts went out to the family. Rueda said the verdict was not just about her father but about every patient who walks into a hospital and expects to come out safe; her father, she said, was a healthy man who trusted the people caring for him, and that trust was broken in the worst way imaginable. Fitzpatrick said the verdict reflected a nuanced truth, that multiple breakdowns in a patient's care can converge to cause devastating harm.

News coverage described the $20 million figure as one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts in Connecticut in recent years. Because the jury assigned most of the fault to a defendant that had already settled, the amount that legally stood against the defendant at trial is the $3 million share, and that is the figure ranked here.