Hospital to pay $30 million in Malpractice case
In a verdict that may go down as the largest medical malpractice award in Lee County history, Lee Memorial Hospital on Friday was ordered to pay more than $30 million to a former Cape Coral couple whose son endured a lifelong crippling brain injury because of the hospital's negligence. The family had filed a lawsuit in 1999 in which it said the hospital ignored its own policies during Aaron Edwards' birth. Edwards is now 9 and can do little on his own said the family's attorney Jack Hill. Hill said a labor nurse ignored warning signs in Edwards' mother, Mitzi Roden, who was experiencing strong, long contractions that led to a decrease in the blood flow to Aaron's brain. He said the nurse also ignored the hospital's policies for births regarding protection of the patient while administering Pitocin, a medication that induces and speeds up labor. Per hospital policy, nurses are supposed to recognize three factors in which a patient should be taken off Pitocin and two were present in Mitzi Roden, Hill said.
"They should have turned the Pitocin off," he said. Hill says the hospital's defense was that the hospital's rules are mainly suggestions and that brain injuries are unforeseeable. "Brain injuries happen," he said. "In this case, it was clearly avoidable."
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