$44.5 Million for a Boy Left Locked In After a Lab Sat on Urgent Test Results for Six Days

The Metts family's son was nine years old when his parents brought him to University Medical Associates, an Athens area practice, with severe ear pain. Eight days later he was back, this time with headache, nausea, vomiting, and sensitivity to light. A nurse practitioner recorded that he was acutely ill and ordered STAT blood work: an erythrocyte sedimentation rate and a C-reactive protein test, inflammatory markers that flag a serious infection. STAT means results are needed within hours. The samples went to Athens Medical Laboratory that afternoon.

The results came back far above normal. No one reported them to the treating clinicians for six days. Before the numbers ever reached a physician, the boy woke up screaming and was rushed to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, where imaging showed the ear infection had spread inside his skull. He underwent emergency brain surgery, but pressure inside his skull kept building until his brainstem herniated. He survived with locked-in syndrome. Paralyzed and at first able to move only his eyes, he learned to communicate with a letter board, and he requires nursing care around the clock.

His parents, Danny and Nikki Metts, sued in the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, Case No. 14CVA-03-2543. Gerald S. Leeseberg tried the case with Craig Tuttle and John Markus of the Columbus firm then known as Leeseberg & Valentine, which now practices as Leeseberg Tuttle. University Medical Associates and Nationwide Children's Hospital settled for undisclosed sums, and those payments were credited against what the family could collect.

After a two week trial, the jury returned its verdict in late September 2018: $44.5 million, made up of $24.5 million in economic damages, including $18.5 million for future medical care and $2.6 million in lost future earnings, plus $20 million in noneconomic damages. Jurors put 50 percent of the fault on Athens Medical Laboratory, with the rest apportioned among the nurse practitioner, her practice, and the hospital.

Then came the part of the case Ohio lawyers still argue about. R.C. 2323.43 caps noneconomic damages in medical claims, and applying it would have cut the jury's $20 million to a small fraction. On December 11, 2018, the trial court refused, holding the cap unconstitutional as applied on due process and equal protection grounds. Later court filings cite that decision as Metts v. Nationwide Children's Hospital. The ruling was never reversed, and the $44.5 million verdict remains the judgment entered at trial, subject to the settlement credits. The fight over the cap itself has continued in other cases: Ohio's Tenth District Court of Appeals cited Metts in Lyon v. Riverside Methodist Hospital in 2025, and briefing now before the Supreme Court of Ohio disputes whether Metts was rightly decided.