$74.5 Million for a Girl Born with Cerebral Palsy After Her OB Ignored Hours of Warning Signs at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center

On April 19, 2009, Sofia Blunt was delivered at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo. During labor, fetal heart-rate monitors showed her heart rate fluctuating erratically, a sign that called for immediate intervention. Her obstetrician, Dr. Kurt Haupt, neither hastened the delivery nor ordered an examination of umbilical cord blood when Sofia was born. She was deprived of oxygen during that window and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy.

Andrew and Jennifer Blunt sued Dr. Haupt and Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center, alleging that both the physician and the hospital failed to act on warnings that were plainly visible in the monitoring data. Sierra Vista settled for an undisclosed amount approximately two weeks into the trial. Dr. Haupt proceeded to verdict.

Trial counsel from Carpenter, Zuckerman and Rowley, LLP, including Robert J. Ounjian and Nicholas C. Rowley, presented the jury with the fetal monitoring strips and the sequence of decisions Dr. Haupt made, or declined to make, during Sofia's delivery. The defense argued that a mucus blockage in the airway, not a failure to act on the monitoring data, caused the oxygen loss. The jury rejected that account and found Dr. Haupt negligent.

The jury returned a verdict of $74.5 million. The breakdown included $53 million for Sofia's projected future medical care across a 63-year life expectancy, $10 million for lost future earnings, and $11.525 million in non-economic damages. California's Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act capped the non-economic component at $250,000, bringing the recoverable non-economic award down to that statutory limit while leaving the economic damages intact. At the time, the verdict was reported as the largest California medical-malpractice birth-injury award on record.