Ratzan Weissman & Boldt represented a mother-to-be who sustained a horrific brain injury following the administration of a spinal block procedure in preparation for a Cesarean section delivery. The 24-year-old arrived at a hospital in Los Angeles County to give birth to her son in March of 2017 but would not leave for more than three months as a result of her sustaining a catastrophic brain injury.
The Defendant Hospital and its anesthesiologist administered 18 hours of epidural anesthesia into her lower back. After the baby failed to progress, the Defendants took the patient to the operating room for a non-emergency C-section operation to deliver the baby. Rather than continue with the epidural administration of anesthesia, the defendants ordered the removal of the epidural and then injected the patient with a spinal block directly into the spinal canal. This injection, on top of the previous high volume of epidural anesthetic, overdosed the patient with anesthesia and resulted in an immediate loss of consciousness and cardiopulmonary arrest in the patient. Even more, the hospital botched the resuscitation efforts with significant delay and protocols which were both not in place and not followed. The traumatic brain injury was so significant that it has caused the client a lifetime of medical care and treatment and full-time attendant care.
RWB was successful in handling an extremely unique legal issue in medical battery, which occurs when the patient does not consent to the medical procedure that caused her injury. Under California law, neither a hospital nor the participating physician is entitled to receive the benefits of the horrific statutory caps on pain and suffering damages if a medical battery is committed. Through discovery, the highly experienced legal team uncovered the fact that their client had not consented to the spinal block procedure, leaving her permanently and catastrophically brain damaged. RWB prevailed on the medical battery issue at the early stages of the litigation with motions to dismiss, on summary judgment, and even on appeal when the hospital sought review of the trial court's ruling.
The existence of the medical battery claim allowed RWB to seek pain and suffering damages for their client. In the end, RWB reached a settlement that is believed to be one of the largest pre-trial settlement in a medical malpractice case in California history. As a result of the team’s success in having a case without caps on damages, this allowed them to obtain a settlement which will take care of the client for the rest of her life.
Ratzan Weissman & Boldt have obtained more than $200 million in verdicts and settlements. Our firm is dedicated to honorable and unyielding representation of patients, consumers, and catastrophically injured individuals in state and federal courts. These cases are examples of the achievements of our firm’s attorneys. All are real cases. However, these examples should not be taken as a guarantee that the same results would be achieved in another case.