Morgan & Morgan Wins $38M for Malpractice Birth Injury Victim

Michelle Coleman was like any expectant mother: Ready to put her trust in her doctor and hospital when it came time for her to deliver her baby. She fully expected the medical staff at Hillsborough County, Florida-based St. Joseph’s Women’s Hospital to do its best to ensure her son was born happy and healthy.

Unfortunately, this isn’t what happened. Her son, Brandon, was born with injuriesafter a trying time in which her doctor, Luciano Martinez, and St. Joseph’s didn’t act quickly enough to provide a necessary C-section in a timely manner. Coleman and Bernard Dixon would seek the talent and experience of Morgan & Morgan attorneys Armando T. Lauritano and Keith M. Carter to fight for them and their son, Brandon.

Lauritano and Carter would ultimately get a successful jury verdict of $37,850,000 for the Coleman-Dixons.

One of the Most Important Events of Her Life

Coleman and Dixon went to St. Joseph’s on the morning of Sept. 7, 2003. She was in labor. Eventually, after she was in the hospital throughout the day, it became clear that the variable rate of fetal heart rate was a problem. It was an ominous sign as the fetal heart rate dropped, prompting discussions of a C-section by 10:39 that evening.

However, Coleman wasn’t taken into the operating room for a c-section until 40 minutes later and the procedure didn’t begin for another 20 minutes.

Baby Brendan Dixon was delivered by 11:48 p.m., with clinical and lab findings showing he had sustained perinatal asphyxia — a condition caused by oxygen deprivation in a newborn during the birth process, and which can cause brain injury if it lasts long enough. Baby Brendan suffered seizures and needed intubation.

Coleman and Dixon sought ought Morgan & Morgan to fight for them, because they said the doctor and the hospital didn’t give them and their child the professional standard of care that hospitals and medical facilities should and usually do.

They said, among other things, that the healthcare professionals failed to perform a timely C-section; recognize signs of fetal distress; institute an appropriate course of action on a patient whose monitors showed ominous signs; timely and appropriately diagnose ongoing fetal distress; follow the appropriate protocol for labor with evidence of distress; and communicate with other physicians about the distress.

The failure to act left Brendan with nervous system injury, brain damage, disability, and also the inability to in the future work and earn money, the lawsuit said. The healthcare professionals’ failure also saddled Coleman and Dixon with hospital bills, medical and nursing care for Brendan, and pain and suffering, among other things.

Overall, when Coleman and Dixon went to the hospital, excited for a future with their new child, and placing a sacred and intimate trust in their medical professionals, they had no idea their trust would be so breached.

But after taking on the family’s doctor and hospital in Hillsborough County court, Lauritano and Carter were able to help make the family whole as much as possible. On Nov. 19, 2007, the attorneys secured the family a $37.8 million verdict that allows the family to cover lifetime medical expenses and compensates them for the heartbreaking hardship they’ve had to endure. It also holds the medical practitioners accountable for their negligence.

Has the System Failed You?

Most of the time, medical professionals live up to the trust you place on them. Most of the time, you can rely on them to successfully provide the guidance, treatment, and procedures you require. But sometimes, healthcare practitioners and hospitals act negligently and put patients at risk.

If you or someone you love were the victim of medical malpractice, contact us today for a free, no-risk case evaluation. Our attorneys at Morgan & Morgan are here to help you in your search for justice.