Robert Ortiz

In December 2015, a physician at First Choice Community Healthcare in Albuquerque examined a 14-year-old boy for stomach pain and fever but ordered no laboratory or imaging tests. His appendix ruptured two days later, and the septic shock that followed caused a hypoxic brain injury and acute kidney injury that left him permanently disabled after eight months in the hospital. Because the federally funded clinic's staff are treated as federal employees, the family sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico. The case settled for $6.8 million in 2020, with most of the money placed in a fund for the boy's future medical care. Robert C. Gutierrez of Will Ferguson & Associates signed the complaint as an attorney of record for the family, alongside Kathryn L. Eaton of Eaton & Eaton Law PC.