PHILADELPHIA – After a Philadelphia jury issued a $182.7 million medical malpractice verdict to a five-year-old boy born with cerebral palsy and his mother, the largest in state history, counsel for the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania have filed a post-trial motion seeking to remit the verdict and call for a new trial.
J.H. and Dajah Hagans first filed suit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas on June 27, 2019 versus Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Kirsten Leitner, M.D., Julie A. Sayama, M.D., Whitney R. Bender, M.D., Sarah Gutman, M.D., Denise Johnson, M.D., Jessica Peterson, M.D. and Victoria Kroesche, R.N. All parties are of Philadelphia.
(Defendants Sayama, Johnson and Peterson were later individually dismissed from the case.)
The plaintiffs’ litigation claimed that upon his birth in February 2018, J.H. received permanent injuries from a delayed Caesarean section performed upon his mother, Hagans, who had an infection in her uterus at the time.
The plaintiffs alleged that HUP staff were negligent in their delivery of Hagans’s son, leading him to develop hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, a condition which led J.H. to suffer both spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy and developmental delays – which necessitate him needing lifetime care.
Though the hospital acknowledged J.H.’s condition, it denied being responsible for it and the hospital instead credited J.H.’s injuries to his mother’s uterine infection.
The Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas trial jury felt differently, handing down its $182,737,791 million verdict, comprised of $101 million for lifetime care costs, $1.7 million for future earnings losses and $80 million in other damages.
The lifetime care cost was based upon a calculus from plaintiff counsel that J.H. would continue to live for more than six decades. According to the hospital, J.H. wouldn’t live past his early teens and had advocated for just $2.5 million in care costs.
At one point during the trial and a debate over whether J.H. was in a persistent vegetative state, he was brought into the courtroom and was shown to recognize his mother, Hagans.
While the hospital is contesting the verdict award, plaintiff counsel for the plaintiffs were ready to receive an appeal and believed the jury’s verdict was “understandably justified.”
UPDATE
On May 1, counsel representing the hospital and other University of Pennsylvania defendants filed a post-trial motion to not only remit the landmark verdict, which it termed “manifestly excessive”, but call for a new trial altogether.
“This case involves the largest medical malpractice verdict in the history of Pennsylvania. A Philadelphia County jury awarded a staggering $182,737,791 in damages against defendant HUP notwithstanding that: (i) Plaintiff withdrew her only direct claim against HUP at the non-suit stage; (ii) chose not to pursue her claims against any of the individual healthcare providers she named (Kirstin Leitner, M.D., Whitney Bender, M.D., Sarah Gutman, M.D. and Victoria Kroesche, R.N.); and (iii) failed to prove liability against Dr. Julie Suyama, the only individual defendant for whom HUP accepted responsibility,” the post-trial motion stated, in part.
“Plaintiff’s counsel made strategic and calculated decisions that should be the death knell of this excessive verdict; they cannot now escape this record and well-settled Pennsylvania case law. Specifically, because Plaintiff’s counsel withdrew their direct claim against HUP, did not prove that Dr. Suyama was negligent, and abandoned her negligence claims asserted against HUP’s named defendant agents – thereby releasing HUP from any further liability – there was no basis for imposing liability against HUP. Therefore, the entire verdict must be set aside. In other words, and making it plain, plaintiff failed to prove that HUP’s agents were negligent – and admitted such on the record – which requires that the entire verdict be vacated because there is no vicarious liability claim. Without this proof, there can be no liability finding against HUP.”
Defense counsel added that “the magnitude of the damages award is excessive, shocks the conscience and must be set aside” – based upon an alleged misleading by plaintiff counsel “about how the factual cause question should appear on the verdict slip”, or that the jury could find the hospital’s conduct “was a factual cause and/or “increased the risk” of harm to J.H.”
Plaintiff counsel E. Merritt Lentz stated he and his co-counsel “are reviewing the hospital’s post-trial motions and plan to respond in the near future.”
The plaintiffs are represented by E. Merritt Lentz, H. Briggs Bedigian and Jon S. Stefanuca of Gilman & Bedigian, in Philadelphia.
The defendants are represented by Joe H. Tucker Jr. of Tucker Law Group in Philadelphia, plus Maureen M. McBride and Andrew P. Stafford of Lamb McErlane, in West Chester.
Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas case 190607280
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com