$30.95 Million Ohio Birth Injury Verdict Against Miami Valley Hospital After Uterine Rupture During Labor
After trial: The parties settled confidentially before the punitive damages phase, so the family received less than the verdict amount. The settlement figure was never disclosed.
Won by Lawrence, Beirne & Lewis.
A Montgomery County jury awarded the Stanziano family $30,953,181 in July 2009 after finding Miami Valley Hospital negligent in a birth injury case, reportedly the largest medical malpractice verdict in Ohio at the time. The parties then reached a confidential settlement before the punitive damages phase, so the amount actually paid was less than the verdict.
What happened
Renetha Stanziano came to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton in December 2000 to deliver her son. She had delivered a previous child by cesarean section and was attempting a vaginal birth this time, a course known to carry an elevated risk of uterine rupture. The labor and delivery staff knew her history.
The family's case was that the staff failed at the safeguards her condition demanded. Nurses did not properly monitor the labor and kept administering Pitocin, a drug that intensifies contractions, even after her uterus became hyperstimulated. The attending physician was not told about her abnormal contraction pattern. Her uterus ruptured. Cut off from oxygen through the placenta, her son went an estimated 18 to 20 minutes without oxygen before delivery.
The boy survived with severe cerebral palsy and permanent brain damage. He cannot walk or speak, is fed through a tube, and requires care around the clock.
The family sued Miami Valley Hospital, the attending obstetrician Dr. Van Steenwyk, and her group, Contemporary Obstetrics and Gynecology, in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas. The Lawrence Firm, which now practices as Lawrence, Beirne & Lewis, tried the case for the family, with Patrick Beirne serving as co-counsel. The trial ran four weeks before Judge Timothy O'Connell.
On July 2, 2009, the jury returned a verdict of $30,953,181 in compensatory damages, with nearly $26 million of it designated for the boy's future medical care. The jury placed fault solely on the hospital. It found neither Dr. Van Steenwyk nor her practice group liable. Coverage at the time described the award as the largest medical malpractice verdict ever returned in Ohio.
The number the jury wrote down is not the number the hospital paid. The compensatory verdict left a punitive damages phase still to be tried, and before that phase went forward the parties reached a settlement. The agreement ended the case, eliminated the punitive phase, and foreclosed any appeal. Lawyers on both sides confirmed the settlement but said its terms were confidential, and the Dayton Daily News reported it was unlikely the hospital would pay the full verdict amount. The family received less than $30,953,181. How much less has never been made public.
What the verdict established still stands on its own terms: after four weeks of evidence, twelve jurors found that the hospital's handling of a known high risk labor caused a child's brain injury, and they priced a lifetime of his care at just under $31 million. The boy was eight years old when they did.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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.