$13.75 Million Verdict for a Woman Who Lost Both Legs, an Arm, and Fingers After a Hospital Delayed Her Sepsis Antibiotics by 14 Hours
After trial: No appellate opinion or report of a post-trial reduction or settlement was found; the hospital said only that it strongly disagreed with the verdict. The defendant is a hospital owned by Universal Health Services, so collectability was not in doubt, but we could not confirm the date or amount actually paid. Two independent reports disagree on whether the jury made a recklessness finding; neither reports any punitive damages.
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.
What happened
Seletha Gartrell was 54, working full time, and by her lawyers' account leading an active life when she came to the emergency department at Aiken Regional Medical Centers on the morning of December 6, 2012. She was admitted at 9:34 a.m. with the classic signs of severe sepsis: a respiratory rate of 28, a heart rate of 155, blood oxygen at 89 percent, and a temperature of 103.1 degrees. Sepsis is a systemic response to infection that can spiral into septic shock and organ failure within hours, and the standard of care turns on speed. Fluids and broad-spectrum antibiotics are supposed to start fast.
According to the complaint as reported by the Aiken Standard, that did not happen. Gartrell was not seen by a physician until about five hours after she arrived. Antibiotics were ordered, then ordered again, but she did not actually receive the proper antibiotics until roughly 14 hours after admission, nine hours after the first order and three and a half hours after the second. Shortly after midnight on December 7 she went into cardiac arrest. A code was called and her pulse was restored, but her hands and feet began to mottle and show the signs of ischemia that follow when blood flow to the extremities collapses. She was transferred to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, where surgeons amputated both legs above the knee, her left arm below the elbow, and fingers on her right hand.
Gartrell sued Universal Health Services, Inc., doing business as Aiken Regional Medical Centers, along with a physician and a nurse, in the Aiken County Court of Common Pleas. The case was tried before Judge Clifton Newman. As the litigation developed, her lawyers narrowed the focus from the initial diagnosis to what the nursing staff did over a two-day window, especially during stretches when no physician was present. The LexisNexis case report on the verdict summarized the theory: nurses administered potent drugs without following the doctors' orders and without telling the doctors they had done so, drugs that further reduced blood flow to her limbs, on top of inadequate fluid resuscitation and the giving of diuretics to a patient in shock.
The hospital's position, stated publicly after the verdict, was that Gartrell arrived with two life-threatening conditions, one of which caused her cardiac arrest, and that its nurses and physicians gave her care that saved her life.
The jury sided with Gartrell. Its verdict, entered March 1, 2017, found the hospital negligent and awarded $13.75 million: $10 million in economic damages, reflecting a lifetime of prosthetics, attendant care, and lost earning capacity for a triple amputee, and $3.75 million in non-economic damages. The Aiken Standard reported that the verdict form also recorded a finding, by clear and convincing evidence, that the hospital had been reckless, willful, or wanton, but no punitive damages were added to the compensatory award, and the LexisNexis report described punitive damages as declined. We could not reconcile those two accounts from the public record; what is not in dispute is that the total judgment was the $13.75 million compensatory figure.
Johnny Felder and Chad McGowan of McGowan, Hood & Felder, LLC tried the case for Gartrell, according to court records cited by the Aiken Standard. Felder called the number conservative given that his client had been left a triple amputee, and said he hoped the verdict would force the hospital to look hard at how medications are ordered and monitored in its emergency room and intensive care unit. Aiken Regional Medical Centers is owned by Universal Health Services, a publicly traded hospital operator. Neither the South Carolina Court of Appeals nor the Supreme Court has published an opinion in the case, and we found no reporting of a post-trial settlement, so the verdict appears to have stood as entered. The firm has described it as the largest personal injury verdict in Aiken County history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Aiken Standard, March 2017: plaintiff's name and age, admission vitals and timeline from the complaint, the 14-hour antibiotic delay, the cardiac arrest and transfer to MUSC, the amputations, the $10 million economic and $3.75 million non-economic breakdown, the recklessness finding on the verdict form, the hospital's statement, and Johnny Felder and Chad McGowan as trial counsel per court records
- 2.LexisNexis Jury Verdicts case of the week, March 30, 2017: full caption (Gartrell v. Universal Health Services, Inc. d/b/a Aiken Regional Medical Centers et al.), Aiken County Circuit Court, Judge Clifton Newman, March 1, 2017 verdict date, plaintiff counsel Chad A. McGowan and John G. Felder of McGowan Hood & Felder, defense counsel, the nursing-medication theory of the case, and the compensatory-only award
- 3.WRDW-TV, March 2017: the March 1, 2017 judgment, the triage and fluid-administration failures alleged, the amputations, and the hospital's statement
- 4.McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC (firm)
More proven verdicts from McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC
All McGowan, Hood, Felder & Phillips, LLC proven verdicts →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.
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.
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.
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