Cook County Jury Awards $20.5 Million to Family of Girl, 11, Who Died After Hospital Tripled Her Morphine Dose
After trial: We found no post-trial motion or appeal in available reports, and we could not confirm whether the award has been paid. One CBS Chicago headline calls the result a settlement, but its reporting and every other account describe a jury verdict.
Won by Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C..
On June 10, 2025, a Cook County jury awarded $20.5 million to the family of an 11-year-old girl who died in October 2020 of combined morphine, hydroxyzine and gabapentin toxicity, about 36 hours after she was discharged from a visit to the cancer clinic at Advocate Children's Hospital. She had been in remission from leukemia. The family argued she should have been admitted instead of sent home on triple her prior morphine dose. The jury's damages were for the family's loss of society and grief.
What happened
On June 10, 2025, a Cook County jury awarded $20.5 million to the family of an 11-year-old girl who died of drug toxicity in October 2020. She had been in remission from leukemia. The award compensates her surviving family for the loss of her society and for their grief and mental suffering.
The girl came to the cancer clinic at Advocate Children's Hospital for a follow-up visit in October 2020. According to her family's attorneys, she was crying from pain and had trouble walking. Her labs showed low platelet and blood cell counts and high liver enzymes, and her blood pressure was persistently low. A nurse practitioner discharged her with instructions to take 15 mg of morphine every four hours as needed, three times the 5 mg dose she had been prescribed before. The gabapentin prescription was increased as well.
About 36 hours after she went home, on October 31, 2020, she died in her sleep. Toxicology showed lethal levels of morphine along with hydroxyzine and gabapentin in her system.
Her family sued Advocate Children's Hospital in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Their lawyers argued that the signs of a sick child, including the pain, the difficulty walking, the abnormal labs and the low blood pressure, called for admission to the hospital so that her blood pressure could be controlled and the cause of the pain found and treated. Sending her home with larger doses of pain medication, they said, was the wrong response. Matthew L. Williams, the lead trial attorney, said afterward that the girl's body was 'yelling out to these clinicians' for help, 'and they just ignored it.'
The case went to trial before Judge Brendan A. O'Brien, beginning May 29, 2025. Dr. Bennet Omalu, a neuropathologist, testified for the family that the medication caused the death. The defendants countered that the death was unforeseeable and that the prescribed dose fell within the recommended range. Aaron D. Boeder, who tried the case with Williams, said the jury recognized that the death was preventable and that the girl should still be with her family.
The jury returned its verdict on June 10. The sources report the single figure of $20.5 million and do not break it down further. Advocate Children's Hospital said it is committed to providing appropriate care to every patient and, citing privacy, declined further comment.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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