A teenager was recently awarded $30 million in a medical malpractice case in Broward County, Florida. It is the largest jury award on record for a 17 year old boy who now suffers from cerebral palsy.

The case

According to an article in the Miami Herald, the boy’s mother went to Westside Regional Medical Center in Plantation Florida in 1991 where she went into labor. A device that was monitoring the fetus started to show signs that the unborn child was not getting enough oxygen to the brain because the umbilical cord had worked its way around the child’s neck.

The doctor in charge allegedly waited several hours to perform an emergency cesarean section, but it was too late. The child was deprived of enough blood and oxygen to the brain to sustain permanent damage. It wasn’t until several months later that the full extent of the damage was understood and a lawsuit was filed.

The verdict

The verdict of $30 million was awarded by a jury and was actually $6 million higher than what the family’s attorney had asked for - $24 million. The jury awarded an additional $6 million for pain and suffering to the teenager who will always suffer from cerebral palsy, has spastic legs and arms and is said to have the mental comprehension of a much younger child.

Much of the award will go to past and future medical expenses – of which there are many. He has had to have a kidney replaced, has had both legs broken and fused back together again and will probably end up in a wheelchair permanently.

AMA reports 10-15% of medical diagnoses are wrong

It’s true. According to a 2005 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (AMA), autopsies show that 10 to 15 percent of medical diagnoses are wrong. Unfortunately, very few of those wrong diagnoses ever go to court because the victim’s loved ones simply don’t know that medical malpractice may have occurred.