Result: Verdict, $6,668,000
Medical malpractice
1986
This medical malpractice case was one of the last trials under the law before damage caps, known as MICRA (for Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act), were inflicted upon the people of California. In 1986, this was by far the largest jury award in Northern California and remained so for many years.
Mrs. McLeod had approached her pregnancy with great care, selecting an obstetrician after careful research and meticulously following his instructions. To her horror, however, when her labor started, the obstetrician was not to be found. Instead, an elderly doctor was covering and was called in by the staff at Children's Hospital.
The fetal heart monitors showed that the child was in distress, but the doctor elected to do nothing for more than eight hours. Under cross examination, he conceded that he knew little about monitors, having only taken a short course of two days at a doctors' conference. Although the nurses recognized the seriousness of the condition, there was no request for help from any of the other staff and no neonatologist was called.
The child, Lateef, was born vaginally, with difficulty, but was not treated in Newborn Intensive Care until it later became obvious that there were serious injuries. He has cerebral palsy.
Medical malpractice cases were and are the most difficult torts to try. Juries instinctively side with doctors, and it is hard to shift this innate bias. We all want to believe in our doctors and we do not easily allow this faith to be shaken. As often happens, there was a critical moment in the trial when the jury's attitude shifted.
For reasons still hard to follow, the doctor's lawyers made the fundamental mistake of trying to do a demonstration of a vaginal delivery with clamps, using a plastic pelvis and baby. This seems to have been a last-minute decision and a bad one. The doctor took a firm grip on the baby and pulled. The head flew off and the plastic pelvis shot across the courtroom. By the time the jury finished gasping, the trial had irrevocably turned in favor of Lateef.
