$40.35 Million Confidential Settlement Over a Missed Ribcage Finding That Let a Child's Cancer Reach the Spinal Canal
After trial: The settlement is confidential. No court, case number, or plaintiff name has been made public, and the claim that this is the largest personal injury settlement in South Carolina history comes from the firm rather than from independent verification.
A South Carolina family reached a confidential $40.35 million settlement, structured under a high-low agreement, after radiologists reading a newborn's early chest X-rays missed a ribcage deformity that turned out to be a sign of neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer that grew into the child's spinal canal and caused permanent paralysis before it was caught.
What happened
In the first three days of a newborn's life, doctors ordered chest X-rays as part of routine care. On those films was a deformity in the upper left corner of the infant's ribcage: ribs that were misshapen and abnormally spaced. According to the family's attorneys, it was the kind of finding a radiologist should have flagged, described in the case as an obvious abnormality that should have been noted rather than passed over as unremarkable.
It was not caught. The radiologists who read the films did not identify the ribcage finding as a sign of anything requiring follow-up, and the child was discharged without further imaging or workup of what the family's case characterized as an early, visible clue to a serious underlying problem.
The underlying problem was neuroblastoma, a cancer that arises in immature nerve cells and is one of the more common solid tumors of early childhood. Neuroblastoma can originate near the spine, and as it grows undetected, it can extend into the spinal canal, where it compresses the spinal cord. That is what happened here. By the time the cancer was diagnosed, it had grown into the child's spinal canal and caused permanent paralysis from the point of compression down.
Once diagnosed, the child was treated aggressively, with chemotherapy and surgery, and the family's attorneys reported the child ultimately became cancer-free. But the paralysis could not be undone, and the child was left with severe scoliosis, a period requiring a tracheostomy, and hip dysplasia, the kind of cascading orthopedic and respiratory complications that follow a spinal cord injury sustained in infancy, when the body is still developing around the injury rather than adapting to it as an adult would.
The family, represented by Chad McGowan, Eve Goodstein, and Jordan Calloway of McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, pursued claims against the radiologists and the medical providers involved in the newborn's early care. Rather than take the full case to verdict, the parties resolved it under a high-low agreement, a structure in which both sides agree in advance to a floor and a ceiling on the outcome regardless of what a jury ultimately decides, reducing risk for both sides while the case proceeds toward or through trial. In September 2022, the case settled for $40.35 million, with roughly $36.3 million of that figure attributed to the child's life care plan and other economic losses tied to a lifetime of paralysis-related care.
No case caption, court, or plaintiff name has been made public. The settlement is confidential under an agreement between the parties, and the facts available come from the family's own legal team rather than from a public docket. A trade publication reported the settlement as the largest personal injury settlement in South Carolina history, a characterization that traces back to the firm rather than to any independent verification, and it is relayed here on that basis rather than confirmed.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC
All McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC proven verdicts →A Spartanburg County jury awarded Dara Robinson $16 million against Spartanburg & Pelham OBGYN and three of its physicians after they delayed a cesarean delivery for roughly 30 hours despite fetal monitoring showing signs of distress, and her son died shortly after birth.
Seletha Gartrell, 54, of Aiken, arrived at Aiken Regional Medical Centers on December 6, 2012 with severe sepsis and was not given the antibiotics her doctors ordered for roughly 14 hours; she went into septic shock, suffered a cardiac arrest, and lost both legs above the knee, her left arm below the elbow, and fingers on her right hand. In March 2017 an Aiken County jury found the hospital negligent and awarded her $13.75 million, made up of $10 million in economic damages and $3.75 million in non-economic damages. The hospital publicly disagreed with the verdict, and no appeal or later reduction appears in any public record we could find.
Vernon Sulton, paralyzed by gunshot wounds he suffered as a bystander to an armed robbery, was admitted to HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Columbia with a stage two pressure ulcer on his sacrum; in the 11 days he stayed there it deepened to stage four, requiring a colostomy and skin-graft surgery. A Richland County jury found the hospital and six of its nurses negligent, awarding $306,693.25 to his estate, $4 million to his wife for loss of consortium, and $8 million in punitive damages against HealthSouth. On November 21, 2012 the South Carolina Supreme Court reversed the entire verdict and ordered a new trial, holding that the trial judge had wrongly instructed the jury that the hospital owed a heightened duty of care. What happened after the remand is not in any public record we could find.
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.