A judge has assigned liability for disabilities suffered by a Wyoming baby to the hospital system that ran the facility where she was born, and it’s nearly a billion dollars.
A lawyer for the family of Azaylee Zancanella said the family should be able to collect a substantial sum, even if it’s not the full award of $951 million, from the corporation that closed and sold its hospitals.
A report at the Daily Mail noted the judge in the case emphasized the child would have been safer being born in “the bathroom of a gas station, or a hut somewhere in Africa.”
The pregnancy, which had been normal, took a turn in October 2019 when Anyssa Zancanella’s water broke during a trip from the family’s Wyoming home to Salt Lake City.
They rushed to Jordan Valley Medical Center West Valley Campus, which was operated at the time by the now defunct Steward Health Care, the report said.
There, the lawsuit charges, the mother as given “excessive” doses of Pitocin, a labor-inducing drug.
And then ignored.
Eventually a C-section was performed, but, the lawsuit charged, the failures deprived the baby of oxygen, causing brain damage.
“[The obstetrician] abandoned mother and fetus/infant when she was fully aware of significant and dangerous issues with the ongoing labor process and the ongoing health and well-being of the fetus,” the lawsuit said.
Azaylee now suffers seizures, and experiences “damages, including but not limited to, permanent neurological and cognitive damages, physical damages, emotional damages, limitations in physical, cognitive and mental function, as well as pain and suffering,” the case charged.
It was Third District Judge Patrick Corum who found Steward Health Care liable in Zancanella’s medical malpractice case, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune
Corum awarded Zancanella, her partner, Daniel McMichael, and their daughter $951 million.
The judge noted Steward essentially walked away from any participation in the case.
“Indeed, since at least the early Spring of 2024, Defendants’ entire strategy seems to have been nothing other than an attempt to thwart justice and the judicial process,” the judge said.
The family’s lawyer, Jennifer Morales, said she expects the family to be able to collect about half of the award, which represents punitive damages.
