Philadelphia Judge Vacates $44.9 Million Temple Hospital Verdict and Orders a New Trial

The $44.9 million verdict a Philadelphia jury returned against Temple University Hospital in August 2024 did not survive post-trial motions. On December 5, 2024, Judge Glynnis Hill of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas granted the hospital's motion for a new trial, finding the jury's liability answers internally inconsistent and its damages award illogical and exorbitant. The verdict was vacated. It belongs in a record of trial work, not in a column of money recovered.

The case began with a shooting. Dylan Hernandez was shot in the neck in 2020 and treated at Temple's Episcopal campus and at its main hospital on North Broad Street. The dispute at trial was about what happened next: whether the hospital adequately evaluated his ability to swallow before sending him home, and whether the discharge instructions his family received matched the risk he carried. Less than two days after discharge, Hernandez aspirated food at home. He was eating mashed potatoes. He went without oxygen long enough to sustain permanent brain damage. He was 19 by the time the case reached a jury.

Thomas Duffy of The Duffy Firm tried the case. The jury returned its verdict on Monday, August 5, 2024, at $44.9 million, most of it assigned to future medical and life care costs, with smaller components for lost earning capacity and noneconomic damages. It was the largest medical malpractice verdict returned in Pennsylvania that year. Temple's general counsel, John Ryan, said that same week that the hospital disagreed with the outcome and would ask the judge to set the verdict aside.

That is what happened. Judge Hill identified two separate problems. The first was the verdict slip itself. The jury had found both the hospital and Hernandez negligent, then found that only the hospital's negligence caused the injury. The hospital's comparative negligence theory rested entirely on the claim that Hernandez ate food the discharge orders prohibited, so a finding that he was negligent but that his negligence caused nothing did not make logical or legal sense.

The second problem was the size of the award. The future medical component came in near $39 million. The plaintiff's own life care experts had put that figure between roughly $17.8 million and $19.6 million. Hill concluded that a number so far above what the plaintiff's own witnesses supported indicated the jury had either miscalculated or been swayed by sympathy or some other improper basis. She wrote that the damages award was more shocking to the court's conscience and sense of justice than the liability inconsistency was.

Temple was defended by the Tucker Law Group and Duane Morris.

An order granting a new trial erases the verdict and puts liability and damages back in front of a fresh jury. No retrial result and no appellate ruling have been reported in the case since the December 2024 order. The $44.9 million figure is a number a jury reached and a judge rejected, and the underlying claim against Temple University Hospital is still open.