$4 Million Verdict After a Surgical Sponge Left Inside a New Mother Migrated Through the Wall of Her Colon
After trial: No appeal of the verdict was found in public reporting.
Won by Mercaldo Law Firm.
A Pima County jury awarded Amanda Hoover $4 million, sixteen times what Banner-University Medical Center Tucson had offered to settle, after a laparotomy sponge left in her abdomen during a cesarean section worked its way through the wall of her colon.
What happened
Amanda Hoover delivered her child by cesarean section at Banner-University Medical Center Tucson. During the surgery, the operating team left a laparotomy sponge inside her abdomen. It was not discovered right away. Hoover lived with pain for months afterward before the sponge was found, by which point it had migrated through the wall of her colon, a complication that meant treating it was no longer a matter of simply retrieving a piece of surgical gauze but addressing damage to her bowel.
Banner offered Hoover $250,000 to settle the claim before trial. She turned it down and took the case to the Mercaldo Law Firm to try in front of a jury instead. The trial in Pima County Superior Court lasted five days. Banner did not dispute that its staff had left the sponge inside her; the fight at trial was over how much the resulting injury and suffering were worth.
The jury returned its verdict on January 24, 2024: $4 million, sixteen times the amount Banner had offered to make the case go away. A Mercaldo Law Firm attorney said afterward that Hoover had courageously pursued justice, seeking accountability for both the physical injury and the emotional distress caused by what the firm called a preventable error.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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