UC Davis Missed a Young Man's Stroke for 26 Hours; Jury Awards $15.3 Million, Capped at $7.56 Million
After trial: The jury's $8,000,000 non-economic award was reduced to $250,000 under California's pre-2023 MICRA cap, leaving $7,558,604. The Regents filed a notice of appeal in May 2024, and we found no appellate decision.
Won by Walkup Personal Injury Lawyers.
A college student in his twenties arrived at the UC Davis Medical Center emergency department unresponsive, and the stroke protocol was not activated. His stroke was diagnosed about 26 hours later, and he was left with major neurocognitive injuries and restrictions in his right hand. In December 2023 a Sacramento jury found negligence and awarded $15,308,604. California's pre-2023 MICRA cap cut the non-economic damages to $250,000, leaving $7,558,604, and the Regents filed a notice of appeal in May 2024.
What happened
Matthew Beaver was a college student in his early twenties when he became unresponsive at home and was taken by ambulance to the emergency department at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. The emergency physicians saw that he could not speak and had neurological symptoms on his right side. Stroke was on their list of possible diagnoses, but they treated it as unlikely and did not activate the hospital's stroke protocol. They pursued other explanations instead, including drug toxicity, a seizure disorder, infection, trauma and an electrolyte problem.
Over the next day, ten different physicians evaluated him. No one diagnosed a stroke until an MRI, roughly 26 hours after he arrived, showed damage to three lobes of the left hemisphere of his brain.
The stroke left him with major neurocognitive injuries. He cannot form and express complete sentences, has difficulty with processing and sequencing, and has restrictions in the use of his right hand. He needs supervision around the clock.
He sued the Regents of the University of California and two emergency physicians in Sacramento County Superior Court (case no. 34-2020-00283227) in February 2020. His lawyers from Walkup, Melodia, Kelly & Schoenberger, Doris Cheng, Christian Jagusch and Ashcon Minoiefar, argued that the emergency team should have acted on the stroke diagnosis it had already considered, activated the stroke protocol and ordered an emergency CT angiogram. Their case was that he was still eligible for clot-busting medication and a thrombectomy while he was in the emergency department, and that timely treatment would have let him live independently. The defense, handled by Kat Todd, Chad Couchot and Carolyn Northrop of Scheuring, Zimmerman & Doyle, argued that every physician met the standard of care and disputed causation, contending that his first CT scan showed the stroke had begun more than six hours before he arrived, too late for those treatments.
The case was tried to a jury over three weeks in Sacramento. On December 29, 2023, the jurors found negligence by a vote of 10 to 2 and causation by 11 to 1, and were unanimous on damages. They awarded $15,308,604 in total: $7,308,604 in economic damages and $8,000,000 in non-economic damages.
Because the case was filed before 2023, California's MICRA cap on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, then $250,000, applied, and the non-economic portion was reduced from $8,000,000 to $250,000. Economic damages are not capped, so the net verdict is $7,558,604.
The Regents filed a notice of appeal in May 2024, and the trial court docket shows the appeal record still being designated in March 2025. We found no published decision from the Third District Court of Appeal.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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