Third Trial Ends in $130 Million Birth Injury Verdict Against St. Charles Hospital

The Reilly family's daughter was born on the evening of November 1, 2002 at St. Charles Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Port Jefferson, on Long Island. In the hour before her delivery she was deprived of oxygen. Doctors noticed seizures soon after birth, and she was later diagnosed with hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and cerebral palsy.

The injury reached every part of her life. She cannot walk on her own, will never speak, and depends on others for all daily activities. Court records described a girl who is aware of everything around her, attends a special needs school in a wheelchair, and will need care in a skilled nursing facility when her mother can no longer provide it at home.

Her parents sued the hospital and the attending obstetrician in Suffolk County Supreme Court, with Thomas A. Moore of Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore as lead trial counsel. The first trial ended in a defense verdict in 2009. In 2011 the Appellate Division, Second Department left the jury's verdict for the obstetrician intact but set aside the verdict for the hospital as against the weight of the evidence and ordered a new trial. The 2012 retrial ended with a hung jury.

Moore tried the case a third time in 2013. He argued that the labor and delivery nurse failed to tell the obstetrician about fetal heart rate decelerations, failed to report a malfunctioning intrauterine pressure catheter, and failed to give the mother oxygen and fluids or reposition her, delaying an emergency cesarean delivery. On April 16, 2013, after a three week trial, the jury returned a $130 million verdict: $92.5 million for pain and suffering, about $32 million for medical and care expenses, and roughly $5.5 million for lost earning capacity. Lawyers on both sides called it one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts in New York history.

The award did not stand at that figure. The trial judge cut the pain and suffering award to $6.9 million and trimmed the economic damages. In October 2016 the Second Department affirmed the liability finding, reinstated the jury's awards for lost earnings and for therapy from age 21, and set pain and suffering at $4.25 million, while sustaining economic damages of about $32 million, close to what the jury had awarded (Reilly v St. Charles Hosp., 143 AD3d 692).

Because the child qualified for New York's Medical Indemnity Fund, created in 2011 for birth injury cases involving neurological damage, her future health care costs are paid by the fund rather than by the defendant. According to the firm, the case ultimately resolved with a $13.6 million cash payment to the family, and their daughter was enrolled in the fund, which is obligated to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.