$40 Million Verdict for Family of Boy Left with Cerebral Palsy After Five-Hour Delivery Delay
Won by Lubin & Meyer.
A Middlesex County jury returned the largest personal-injury verdict in Massachusetts history after finding that an obstetrician waited more than five hours to perform an emergency C-section despite clear signs of fetal distress, causing a Dracut boy to develop cerebral palsy.
What happened
On the night of November 7, 1996, Lisa Antonelli arrived at Saints Memorial Medical Center in Lowell at 38 weeks pregnant, not in labor but worried because she could not feel her baby moving. Obstetrician Dr. Jacqueline Halladay ran two tests that both showed the fetus in distress and deprived of oxygen.
By 1:30 a.m., the tests made clear that an emergency cesarean section was needed. Dr. Halladay did not order one. The surgery did not happen until 7:05 a.m., roughly five and a half hours later. Philip Antonelli Jr. was delivered with severe brain damage.
Philip, who was eight years old at the time of trial, has cerebral palsy and functions at the level of a two- to four-year-old. He requires help with daily activities, uses braces to walk, has limited control of his right hand, has difficulty speaking, and has a shunt implanted to drain fluid from his brain.
Robert Higgins of Lubin and Meyer tried the case in Middlesex County Superior Court. On August 17, 2005, the jury returned a verdict of nearly $40 million, including interest, finding Dr. Halladay negligent for the prolonged delay. The award was the largest personal-injury verdict in Massachusetts state history at the time, surpassing a previous record of $30 million set in 1992 in another birth-injury case.
Under a pre-trial agreement, the verdict could not be appealed. The amount actually recovered by the family was limited to Dr. Halladay's malpractice insurance policy maximum, which was not publicly disclosed.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Lubin & Meyer
All Lubin & Meyer proven verdicts →A Norfolk Superior Court jury awarded Andrea Larkin $35.4 million after finding that Dedham Medical Associates failed to document a known brain abnormality, leaving her obstetrician unaware of a condition that made vaginal delivery dangerous.
An Essex Superior Court jury awarded $29 million to the two daughters of Joseph Brown, 43, after Salem Hospital emergency physicians failed to order a CT scan that would have revealed a fatal aortic aneurysm and dissection in time for lifesaving surgery.
A Middlesex Superior Court jury awarded Steven Luppold $20 million after Lowell General Hospital emergency staff misdiagnosed a leg blood clot as sciatica on two separate visits, delaying treatment until amputation was unavoidable.
A Suffolk Superior Court jury awarded $16.7 million after a Brigham and Women's Hospital radiologist read a 2006 chest X-ray as normal, missing a visible lung nodule that would develop into terminal cancer within 13 months.
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.
Georgia Hayes, a Kansas City area ovarian cancer patient, sued pharmacist Robert Courtney after learning he had diluted the chemotherapy drugs used in her treatment. A Jackson County jury found Courtney liable and awarded Hayes $225,571,439 in compensatory damages and $2 billion in punitive damages, the first of hundreds of similar suits against Courtney to reach trial. The trial judge later found the award excessive and cut it by remittitur to $330,071,439, and that reduced judgment stood. Hayes herself and the case reporter covering the verdict both said she was unlikely to ever collect a significant portion of it.