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$6 Million Medical Negligence Settlement on Behalf of a Five-Year-Old Boy
We are proud to announce that attorney Stephen J. Phillips recently secured a $6,000,000 settlement for a five-year-old boy who suffered hearing loss shortly after birth at a local Chicagoland Hospital.
Our client was born full term at a Chicago area hospital after a routine pre-natal course. He was noted in the medical record to be a healthy, normal newborn baby at the time of delivery. However, routine bloodwork at 24 hours of life revealed abnormally high levels of bilirubin, a yellow-ish substance formed when red blood cells break down. While adults can usually tolerate higher levels of bilirubin, newborns can have particularly difficulty tolerating high bilirubin. If a newborn’s bilirubin levels get too high, the bilirubin can cause neurological damage including death and injury to the eyes and ears. Our client’s bilirubin was noted to be on the edge of “high risk.”
The medical chart reflects that the nurse responsible for drawing our client’s blood reported the bilirubin lab value to the supervising physician as a “critical lab value.” However, in her deposition, she denied this and stated that she did “not really think his levels were critical,” and she had limited options for the lab value in her electronic medical record system at the hospital so she just decided to check the box for “critical.” She further stated that she was not at all concerned with our client’s bilirubin level and was ok with discharging him home.
Remarkably, and despite knowing that this newborn baby’s bilirubin value was on the edge of “high risk,” the supervising physician and the nurse sent our client home with a follow-up appointment set six (6) days out, which was a contradiction of hospital discharge policy. When confronted with this fact in her deposition, the nurse begrudgingly admitted after a lengthy back and forth with Mr. Phillips that the manner in which this baby was discharged was “not safe.”
Ultimately, our client was sent home without appropriate follow-up and no plan for rechecking his bilirubin. His mother brought him back to the emergency department three (3) days later when he started showing signs of lethargy and was difficult to wake. In the emergency department, he was diagnosed with extremely high bilirubin and was transferred to a different hospital for a higher level of care where he underwent phototherapy and blood transfusions. He was ultimately diagnosed with a condition called auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD), which is a hearing disorder caused by damage to the auditory nerve.
Nonetheless, the defendants vigorously defended the case for three (3) years on the issues of liability, causation, and damages. They argued that a significant number of children are discharged home with similar bilirubin levels and have no issue. They also argued that this case represented an anomaly due to a genetic deficiency in our client’s DNA that prevented his body from breaking down red blood cells like a normal baby. They retained multiple medical experts across different medical specialties to testify that the defendants followed the standard of care and moreover, that nothing they did caused the injury – this was just an unavoidable medical tragedy.
Our client now has partial hearing loss in both of his ears, requiring the use of hearing aids. Despite his limitations, he can have meaningful conversations with his family and friends and interact with his teachers and classmates. He is a very inquisitive, kind little boy and the money from this settlement will be used to ensure he has access to all of the medical care he needs, now and in the future, including necessary speech language therapy, assistive hearing devices, and safety devices.
This was a very special young man with a very special family. His parents, who both work full-time, are some of the most attentive, engaged parents I’ve ever seen. You can tell they are really invested in their son’s well-being. They were constantly working with him on his speech therapy at home – helping him expand his vocabulary and better his speech articulation. His parents have been major advocates for him since birth, and his positive recovery is a testament to that.
The case settled one month before trial after thirty-one (31) depositions and twenty-four (24) court appearances. Please contact Stephen J. Phillips at 312-346-4262 or [email protected] for more information.
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