$22.75 Million Verdict for Family of Disabled Woman Who Died After Care Facility Medication Errors
Won by Sweet James.
A San Bernardino jury awarded $22.75 million to the family of a severely developmentally disabled woman who died after her residential facility and adult day program both failed to respond to warning signs of a fatal drug buildup in her system.
What happened
Casarah Thomas was a severely developmentally disabled adult who lived at Shelley's House, a residential care facility in San Bernardino County owned and operated by Nineteenee Corp. She also attended a structured adult day program called BOT, run by Yodites and Associates Management LLC. Casarah had an undetected genetic condition, a CYP2D6 deficiency, that made her body unable to process the antidepressant Doxepin at a normal rate. As the drug accumulated to toxic levels, neither facility caught the signs.
On February 5 and 6, 2019, Casarah began showing new, troubling symptoms, outward signs of Doxepin intoxication that caregivers at both Shelley's House and BOT observed firsthand. Under California regulations and each facility's own policies, those symptoms required them to seek immediate medical attention. Neither did. That same period, Shelley's House compounded the situation by administering Topiramate, a medication her psychiatrist had previously discontinued specifically because of a bad prior reaction. Casarah died as a result of the combined drug toxicity.
The family, represented by Sweet James LLP attorneys Ashkahn Mohamadi and Bobby Taghavi, filed suit in San Bernardino Superior Court in December 2019 (Case No. CIVDS1937151), naming Nineteenee Corp., Yodites and Associates Management, Rodante and Delle Canlas, and others as defendants. The case was tried before Judge Janet M. Frangie over 23 court days.
Defendants were aware of the stakes. Before trial, the combined pre-trial defense offer was $1.7 million globally, including Nineteenee's $1 million policy limit. On the eve of the verdict, Yodites raised its offer to $4 million, bringing the total defense offer to $5 million. The jury rejected that value and deliberated for under two hours before returning a verdict on April 26, 2023.
The award totaled $22,750,000, split equally between the two defendants at $11,375,000 each. The jury allocated $4 million to past non-economic damages and $18.75 million to future non-economic damages. No reduction or reversal on post-trial motions or appeal had been reported as of the date of publication.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Sweet James
All Sweet James proven verdicts →A Kings County jury returned a $17.4 million verdict against the City of Hanford after a municipal tree-trimming vehicle ran a stop sign at 51 mph and slammed into a car carrying two elderly sisters.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.