Rockland County Cervical Surgery Verdict Cut From About $45.9 Million to About $23.4 Million
After trial: The reduction was made under CPLR 4404(a) and 5501(c), New York's judicial review of excessive verdicts, not a statutory cap; New York does not cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. The July 10, 2023 order gave the plaintiff 30 days to stipulate to the reduced pain and suffering and loss of consortium figures or face a new trial on damages. Reargument motions followed, and a later Rockland County order granted reargument on the future economic damages and adhered to the original ruling. We could not confirm from public sources whether the stipulation was filed, whether a new damages trial occurred, or what judgment was finally entered, so the figure ranked here is the award as reduced by the 2023 order rather than a confirmed final judgment. The jury apportioned 25 percent of the fault to each of the two remaining doctors, so the amount each ultimately owed, after New York's apportionment rules and any credit for the settling defendants, is not public. The $11.8 million recovered from the defendants who settled before trial is separate from the figure ranked here. News coverage at the time of the verdict described the award as about $56 million; the trial court's own itemization of the verdict totals approximately $45.9 million.
Won by Torgan Cooper + Aaron, P.C..
A Rockland County, New York jury found two neurosurgeons at fault after a 2009 cervical spine operation left their patient, Patricia Jones, a quadriplegic, and in 2019 returned a verdict the trial court itemized at approximately $45.9 million, on top of $11.8 million her family had already recovered from defendants who settled before trial. The jury found that a spinal cord injury developing after the surgery went unrecognized and untreated until it was too late, and it apportioned 25 percent of the fault to each of the two doctors who stood trial. In a July 2023 order the court held the pain and suffering and loss of consortium awards excessive under New York law and reduced them, bringing the award as reduced to about $23.4 million, conditioned on the family accepting the cut or trying damages again. Evan Torgan of Torgan Cooper + Aaron is named in the decision as counsel for the family.
What happened
On August 18, 2009, Patricia Jones went into Good Samaritan Hospital in Suffern, New York, for an elective cervical laminectomy and fusion at C4 through C6, recommended to relieve a herniated disc. Dr. George Alexander Jones performed the operation, Dr. Daniel Evan Spitzer assisted, Dr. Li Huang conducted the neurophysiological monitoring of her spinal cord, and Dr. Jeffrey Degen supervised that monitoring from off site. What the jury later faulted happened after the surgery was over.
The next day, her husband testified, she bolted upright in bed, screamed in pain, and fell back. By 8:00 p.m. on August 19 she was lethargic, was not moving her arms or legs, and her blood pressure had fallen to 50 over 42. Hospital records show a doctor was called at that hour. Dr. Degen was called at 10:15 p.m. A STAT CT scan ordered at 11:00 p.m. was read as suspicious for an epidural hematoma, blood collecting against the spinal cord. Dr. Degen ordered an urgent MRI at 12:05 a.m., and the MRI was not done until 9:00 a.m. the next morning. The trial court later wrote that it was undisputed that at 8:00 p.m. there was still a chance to save her spinal cord function and that by 10:15 p.m. it was too late. She was left a quadriplegic with no sensation below the C4 level, dependent on a motorized wheelchair and around-the-clock care. A New York Daily News report on the verdict said the lawsuit alleged that her doctors told her she had suffered a coincidental stroke rather than disclose what had gone wrong.
Jones and her husband, John, sued the surgeons, the monitoring physicians, the hospital, the radiologists, and the nurses involved. Several defendants settled before trial for a combined $11.8 million. The claims against the rest went to a six-month jury trial in 2019. The jury found Dr. Spitzer 25 percent at fault and Dr. Jones 25 percent at fault, and found no liability against Dr. Degen or Dr. Huang.
On damages the jury awarded $10 million for past pain and suffering, $10 million for future pain and suffering, $5 million for past loss of consortium to John Jones, $5 million for future loss of consortium, $800,000 for past lost earnings, $79,397.72 for future lost earnings, and roughly $15 million for future expenses. The trial court put the total at approximately $46 million, separate from the $11.8 million already recovered from the settling defendants.
The doctors moved to set the verdict aside as excessive. In a decision dated July 10, 2023, Acting Supreme Court Justice Rolf M. Thorsen agreed in part. He held that the pain and suffering and loss of consortium awards deviated materially from reasonable compensation and cut them to $2 million past and $4 million future pain and suffering, and $500,000 past and $1 million future loss of consortium. The lost earnings and future expense awards were left alone. The order set aside the verdict for a new trial on damages unless the plaintiff filed a written stipulation accepting those figures within 30 days, which brings the award as reduced to about $23.4 million.
By the time the court ruled, Patricia Jones had died, and the case was carried on by her husband as administrator of her estate. Reargument motions followed; a later Rockland County order granted reargument on the future economic damages and adhered to the original ruling. Public records do not show whether the stipulation was filed, whether a new damages trial took place, what judgment was finally entered, or how New York's fault-apportionment rules and the credit for the earlier settlements divided the remaining exposure between the two doctors. Evan Torgan of Torgan Cooper + Aaron is listed in the court's decision as counsel for the Jones family.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Supreme Court, Rockland County, NY, Jones v. Jones (John Jones, as administrator of the estate of Patricia Jones, v. George Alexander Jones, M.D., Daniel Evan Spitzer, M.D., et al.), Index No. 031649/2011, Decision and Order dated July 10, 2023 (Thorsen, A.J.S.C.), 2023 NY Slip Op 50697(U), via FindLaw: the counsel block naming Evan Torgan, Esq. (Torgan Cooper & Aaron, PC) for the plaintiff, the post-operative timeline, the jury's damages itemization totaling approximately $46 million exclusive of $11.8 million from settling defendants, the 25 percent fault findings against Dr. Spitzer and Dr. Jones and the no-liability findings for Dr. Degen and Dr. Huang, and the reduction of pain and suffering to $2 million and $4 million and loss of consortium to $500,000 and $1 million on a stipulate-or-retry-damages condition
- 2.New York Daily News, Leonard Greene, August 12, 2019 (republished by Ortho Spine News): reports the 2019 verdict in Patricia Jones' favor, names Evan Torgan as the family's attorney, describes the failed intraoperative monitoring and resulting quadriplegia, and reports the lawsuit's allegation that doctors attributed her condition to a coincidental stroke
- 3.Supreme Court, Rockland County, NY, e-filed decision on the post-trial reargument motions in Index No. 031649/2011: records that the plaintiff moved to reargue part of the July 10, 2023 Decision and Order and that the court granted reargument on the jury's award of future economic damages and adhered to its original decision, finding those damages reasonably certain to be incurred. The court's document server is behind a bot challenge, so this was read through the publicly indexed text of the document.
More proven verdicts from Torgan Cooper + Aaron, P.C.
All Torgan Cooper + Aaron, P.C. proven verdicts →A Manhattan jury awarded $72.5 million on February 22, 2024 to Aurora Beauchamp, a stage 4 cancer patient who was struck in a Lower East Side crosswalk by an MTA bus and dragged roughly 20 feet before it came to rest on her legs, crushing her pelvis and paralyzing her left leg, in what was widely reported as potentially the largest pedestrian knockdown verdict against the MTA. The money has not been paid: the transit defendants appealed after judgment was entered in May 2025, the Appellate Division denied the Beauchamps' bid to fast-track the briefing in December 2025, and the appeal remains pending.
In October 2003, James McMillan was one of roughly 1,500 passengers on the Staten Island Ferry Andrew J. Barberi when it hit a maintenance pier at close to full speed after its solo pilot blacked out, a crash that killed 11 people and left McMillan a quadriplegic. Liability was already settled by the time his case reached trial, so Judge Jack B. Weinstein tried damages in the Eastern District of New York with an advisory jury, with Torgan & Cooper, P.C. (now Torgan Cooper + Aaron) representing McMillan. The City argued his future medical costs should be figured on race-based life expectancy statistics predicting a shorter life for a Black claimant; Weinstein refused, in the first federal ruling to hold that such statistics cannot be used to calculate damages. His own findings of fact, amended twice, fixed the award at $18.3 million, the largest of the cases brought against the City over the crash, and the City paid it.
In November 2002, 14-year-old Edward Beloyianis underwent surgery at a Manhattan hospital, then part of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, to correct severe scoliosis, and came out of it paralyzed from the waist down after four screws meant to anchor the correction were misplaced and left pressing against his spinal cord. Beloyianis and his parents sued the hospital and the surgeon, alleging the surgical team never performed the CT scan that would have caught the misplaced hardware in time to reverse the damage. Beloyianis died in 2010 at age 22 from complications tied to the paralysis, and in May 2015 a Bronx jury awarded his parents $45,625,000, splitting fault evenly between the hospital and the surgeon. The trial court later cut the award to $9,242,000 on the defendants' post-trial motion. Both sides appealed, and two unaffiliated attorney blogs report that the case settled for $10,900,000 in late 2018 before the appeals were perfected, a figure that no news account or court record confirms.
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