$5.7 Million Verdict After Hospital Discharged High-Risk Suicide Patient Who Died Three Days Later
Won by Shamberg Johnson & Bergman.
A Johnson County jury awarded $5.7 million to the family of Kim Yates, a 49-year-old woman who died by suicide three days after AdventHealth Shawnee Mission discharged her despite an initial triage assessment flagging her as high risk, in what records show is the largest wrongful death or medical malpractice verdict in Johnson County history.
What happened
In late 2020, Kim Yates suffered a stroke. In the months that followed, the stroke triggered depression, anxiety, and severe insomnia. By early 2021, her husband Christopher had witnessed two suicide attempts at home.
On April 11, 2021, after the second attempt, Christopher brought Kim to AdventHealth Shawnee Mission for emergency psychiatric evaluation. Triage staff documented her as high risk for suicide. Despite that assessment, a licensed professional counselor and a nurse practitioner recommended discharge, and Kim was released the same day.
Three days later, on April 14, 2021, Kim died by suicide. She was 49 years old. The method she used was the same one Christopher had witnessed during the attempts that had preceded her hospitalization.
Her family retained Shamberg, Johnson and Bergman. Attorneys Scott Nutter, Daniel Singer, and Jane Rose built the case around what the hospital's own intake documentation showed: a high-risk finding that its clinicians overrode without adequate basis. The trial centered on the adequacy of the suicide risk assessment performed by the mental health counselor and the emergency APRN, and on the hospital's vicarious liability for the APRN's conduct.
On June 20, 2025, the Johnson County jury returned a verdict of $5.7 million, broken down as $4.2 million in economic damages and $1.5 million in non-economic damages. According to Greater Kansas City Jury Verdict Service records cited by the Johnson County Post, it is the largest verdict in Johnson County history involving wrongful death or medical negligence. KAMMCO, the Kansas medical malpractice insurer trade group, noted it is one of only five medical malpractice verdicts exceeding $5 million in Kansas over the past 40 years. No appeal or remittitur has been reported as of the time of publication.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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