$9 Million Verdict After Imaging Table Collapsed Under Patient Who Had Asked Whether It Would Hold Him
After trial: On appeal. The jury's $9 million verdict was entered April 5, 2024, and the trial court added about $5.4 million in offer-of-compromise interest, for a judgment of roughly $14.4 million.
Won by Silver Golub & Teitell LLP.
James Griswold, 58, asked the staff at Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists whether their imaging table could hold his 340-pound frame before a nuclear stress test on July 1, 2014. He was told bigger people had used it. The head of the table then dropped to the floor with a loud pop, and the spinal injuries that followed led to three surgeries, a blood clot, a stroke and a brain abscess that left him unable to walk unaided. A Waterbury jury awarded him and his wife $9 million on April 5, 2024, and the court added $5.4 million in interest. The defendants have appealed.
What happened
James Griswold of Plymouth, Connecticut, was 58 years old, six feet four inches tall and about 340 pounds when doctors at Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists, a cardiology practice with offices in Bridgeport and Fairfield, ordered a nuclear stress test. On July 1, 2014, he was asked to get onto an imaging table for the scan. He looked at the table and asked whether it could support his weight. According to his complaint, radiologic technologist Joyce Giannelli or other staff told him the table had held bigger people, and that he should not tell them how to do their jobs.
He got on. Shortly afterward the table made a loud popping noise and its head section fell to the floor with sudden force, leaving him tilted at a 45-degree angle. Giannelli's incident report, written the same day, said he told her he was all right and that she and a nurse helped him to his feet. By that afternoon he was calling the office to say his neck had started to click.
What followed was far worse than a stiff neck. Griswold's lawyers argued the collapse injured his back, neck and spine and forced surgeries to place and later remove orthopedic hardware around his spine. After those operations, blood clots blocked his vessels and caused a stroke, a brain abscess and other neurological damage. The complaint described paralysis and weakness on his right side, severe infections, pneumonia, kidney failure, delirium, trouble swallowing and speaking, and long stretches in hospitals and nursing homes. He needs help to walk and his speech is permanently impaired.
The Griswolds sued Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists P.C., Dr. Michael Logue and Giannelli in Waterbury Superior Court in September 2016 and filed a $2 million offer of compromise the same year. The defense, David Robertson and Keith Blumenstock of Heidell, Pittoni, Murphy & Bach, argued the claims were time-barred and treated the matter as a no-pay case. Causation was the real fight: Griswold had a prior back injury, and the defense contended the fall did not explain what happened to him afterward. The plaintiffs' expert, a former spine surgeon for the New York Yankees, walked the jury through the mechanism of injury.
After a three-week trial, the jury returned its verdict on Friday, April 5, 2024. It found Giannelli 100 percent responsible and Logue not liable, and awarded James Griswold $3 million in economic damages and $4 million for pain and suffering, and Diana Griswold $2 million for loss of consortium: $9 million in all. Because the defendants had ignored the 2016 offer of compromise and only matched it while the jury was deliberating, the court added $5.4 million in prejudgment interest under Connecticut's offer-of-compromise statute, bringing the judgment to about $14.4 million.
Joaquin Madry and Nicole Coates, then partners at Silver Golub & Teitell, tried the case for the Griswolds. The defendants appealed. James Griswold et al. v. Advanced Cardiovascular Specialists, P.C. et al. (AC 47744) appears on the Connecticut Appellate Court's October 2025 and January 2026 term dockets, and no decision had been released as of September 2026.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Connecticut Law Tribune, April 8, 2024·Archived copy
- 2.Stamford Advocate, April 9, 2024·Archived copy
- 3.Hartford Business Journal, April 9, 2024·Archived copy
- 4.Patch, April 2024·Archived copy
- 5.Connecticut Appellate Court docket, January 2026 term·Archived copy
- 6.Silver Golub & Teitell LLP (firm)·Archived copy
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