$20 Million Cook County Settlement After Toddler's Heart Stopped Unnoticed for Five Minutes Post-Surgery
After trial: The $20,000,000 settlement was approved by the Cook County Board of Commissioners on February 5, 2013, and is funded by the county. No appeal; the case resolved before trial.
Won by Schwartz Jambois.
In December 2011 a 2-year-old boy went into cardiac arrest after surgery at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County to repair an undescended testicle. Doctors and nurses did not notice that his heart had stopped for about five minutes before starting CPR. The oxygen loss left him with permanent brain damage; he cannot walk or speak and needs round-the-clock nursing care. On February 5, 2013, the Cook County Board approved a $20 million settlement of the malpractice suit his mother filed, one of the largest in county history. Timothy Ashe represented the family.
What happened
In December 2011 a 2-year-old boy was brought to John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County, the public hospital on Chicago's Near West Side, for a routine operation to repair an undescended testicle. It is a common pediatric procedure with a short recovery. What happened afterward was not routine. Following the surgery the boy went into cardiac arrest, and the doctors and nurses in attendance did not notice that his heart had stopped. Roughly five minutes passed before anyone began cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Five minutes without circulation is a long time for a toddler's brain. A child under anesthesia in a recovery setting is supposed to be on continuous monitoring precisely so that a stopped heart is caught within seconds and resuscitation starts at once; here the alarm, the recognition and the response all came late. The staff revived him, but the oxygen deprivation caused extensive and irreversible brain damage. According to the family's lawyer, the boy cannot walk or speak, is incontinent, is fed through a tube, is visually impaired and needs nursing care around the clock. He will need that level of care for the rest of his life.
His mother, Justine Francique, filed a medical malpractice lawsuit against Cook County, which operates Stroger Hospital, in the Circuit Court of Cook County. Timothy Ashe of Kralovec, Jambois & Schwartz (now Schwartz Jambois) handled the case. The claim was straightforward: a hospital that has just put a small child under anesthesia has to monitor him closely enough to know within seconds, not minutes, when his heart stops.
The county, which self-insures its public hospital system through its own budget, did not take the case to trial. On February 5, 2013, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a $20 million settlement, which local reporters described as one of the largest in county history. Board President Toni Preckwinkle said disciplinary action had been taken against a number of the individuals involved, and that the county health system's chief executive, Dr. Ram Raju, had put measures in place to prevent a repeat. The settlement was structured to fund the boy's care for the rest of his life. The county board approved a further $4 million in other settlements the same day.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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