HYDE PARK — A jury has awarded $53 million to a 12-year-old boy, in a case against the University of Chicago hospital after the boy was born there with a severe brain injury.
A Cook County Circuit Court jury awarded Isaiah Ewing $53 million for medical bills, pain and suffering, and other damages, according to Ewing’s attorney Geoffrey Fieger.
Ewing was born at the University of Chicago’s hospital in 2004 and the complaint alleged that hospital staff ignored signs of fetal distress and oxygen deprivation.
“The University of Chicago mounted and obscene defense claiming that Isaiah’s brain injury was due to an unknown phantom disease,” Fieger said in a prepared statement. “This defense was made all the more absurd because the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Chicago hospital had ruled out an infection and had diagnosed Isaiah’s brain injury as being caused by lack of oxygen.”
Meanwhile, representatives of the hospital are aiming to declare a mistrial "based on assertions of Mr. Fieger’s improper conduct," said Lorna Wong, a spokeswoman for the hospital.
Wong invoked other cases in which "Mr. Fieger’s conduct ... has resulted in overturned verdicts and revocation of his permission to appear in court in several states."
"We have great sympathy for Isaiah Ewing and his family," Wong said. "We strongly disagree with the jury’s verdict and believe Mr. Fieger’s conduct influenced the decision."
It took nearly three years to resolve the initial complaint and Ewing is now 12 years old. An appeal would lengthen that complaint even longer and the jury award could be reduced or overturned on appeal.
The verdict is the largest medical malpractice verdict in Cook County history, according to the prepared statement from Ewing's attorney.
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