$172 Million Bronx Verdict After EMTs Arrived Without Oxygen or Defibrillator and Told Family to Wait
After trial: No appellate decision is on the public record; the headline number was never tested on appeal.
Won by Kramer Dillof Livingston & Moore.
Thomas Moore won a $172 million jury verdict in Bronx Supreme Court for a woman left with catastrophic brain damage after FDNY EMTs responded to her 1998 cardiac arrest without essential equipment and advised her family to wait for a second ambulance instead of transporting her immediately.
What happened
On February 21, 1998, a 12-year-old girl in the Bronx went into anaphylactic shock during a routine home infusion of a corticosteroid prescribed for a chronic eye condition. Her mother called 911. A Basic Life Support ambulance arrived, but the crew had not brought oxygen, epinephrine, or a defibrillator. Faced with a child in cardiac arrest, the EMTs told the family to wait for an Advanced Life Support unit. That unit arrived roughly 20 minutes later. By then, prolonged oxygen deprivation had caused severe, irreversible brain damage.
The victim, Tiffany Applewhite, survived but was left permanently unable to speak, confined to a wheelchair, dependent on a feeding tube, and, in the words of her attorney Thomas Moore, 'literally trapped in her own body.' She has required around-the-clock care ever since.
The road to trial was long. The City of New York initially persuaded a trial court to dismiss the suit, arguing it owed no 'special duty' to Applewhite. The Appellate Division, First Department reversed that ruling, finding the duty question belonged to a jury. New York's Court of Appeals affirmed that decision in June 2013, clearing the way for trial.
At trial before Justice Alison Tuitt in Bronx Supreme Court (Index No. 22234/98), Moore presented evidence that the City had imposed 30-day unpaid suspensions on the responding EMTs for protocol violations. That internal discipline proved damaging to the defense. The City's lawyers, according to Moore, had offered the family nothing before trial and told them they could not win.
After a three-week trial, the jury returned a verdict of $172 million: $25 million for past pain and suffering, $40 million for future pain and suffering, and more than $100 million for future medical care. It stood as one of the largest verdicts in New York State history. The City's Law Department said the verdict was 'not consistent with the law' and announced it intended to appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Kramer Dillof Livingston & Moore
All Kramer Dillof Livingston & Moore proven verdicts →After Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia in May 2015, killing eight and injuring more than 200, Kline & Specter's Thomas R. Kline led the plaintiffs' negotiations that produced a $265 million settlement fund for the victims.
A Suffolk County jury awarded $130 million to a girl who developed cerebral palsy after oxygen deprivation during her 2002 delivery at St. Charles Hospital, after Thomas A. Moore of Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore tried the case three times; appellate review later cut the pain and suffering award to $4.25 million, and the firm reports the case resolved for $13.6 million in cash plus lifetime Medical Indemnity Fund coverage.
A Bronx jury awarded $120 million to Jacqueline Martin, a 45-year-old mother who suffered permanent brain damage after three New York City hospitals repeatedly failed to recognize and treat a severe allergic reaction to seizure medication that triggered Stevens-Johnson Syndrome.
In April 2023 a Wayne County jury awarded $96 million to the widow and mother of Jude and Zachary Attianese, a New Jersey father and son killed when a Challenger Motor Freight tractor-trailer rear-ended their car in an I-75 construction zone in 2018. The company had acknowledged responsibility, so the trial addressed damages. The driver was taking medications for Parkinson's disease, and the company had known of his diagnosis since 2015.
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