Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog

The Philadelphia Enquirer reported yesterday on $20 million a jury awarded to a 6-year old boy in a medical malpractice case after he went blind almost immediately following his birth. The verdict is considered among the largest awarded in a medical malpractice case by a suburban Philadelphia jury. Shanin Specter, the medical malpractice lawyer for the child and his parents, said the jury found the hospital was 60% responsible for the child's injuries, and that the head of the neonatology unit was 35% responsible. The jury also found malpractice on the part of the pediatric opthalmologist and the child's pediatrician's group, 4% and 1%, respectively.

As regular readers of this blog know, my twins were recently in the NICU at Anne Arundel Medical Center. In fact, they were released just this Saturday. I appreciate in a new way how awful this must have been for the child and his family. With the grace of God, our experience was just the opposite. Almost without exception - almost - the doctors and nurses there were absolutely fantastic. One of the pediatric neonatologists spent literally hours with me discussing the medical scientific literature, looking at the nuances of my children's medical records and diagnostic testing. She even showed me how to read head sonograms, at least to the extent it mattered to what we were looking for with my children. Similarly, my pediatrician was amazing. Today, he gave me the results of the literature search that he did solely for me relating to the epidemiological studies he believed were relevant to the risks to preterm babies.

Of course, I would not be surprised if this boy's doctors in Philadelphia were great doctors who cared a great deal about this little boy that they treated. But, at least according to this jury, a terrible mistake was made that this boy will carry with him for the rest of his life (or, until a cure is found - great developments have been made of late in curing the blind and sight impaired).