Las Vegas Jury Awards $47 Million to Woman Left With Locked-In Syndrome After Sodium Overcorrection

On January 1, 2019, Amy Geiler went to the hospital after a fall. Tests showed that her blood sodium had dropped to a dangerously low level, a condition called hyponatremia. Sodium that low has to be raised slowly, over days, to avoid harming the brain. While Geiler was under hospital care, her level climbed by more than 17 points in a single day.

Correcting sodium that fast can destroy the protective coating around nerve cells in the brainstem, an injury known as osmotic demyelination syndrome. That is what happened to Geiler. She was left with locked-in syndrome. Her mind works normally, but she cannot move or speak, and she communicates by blinking.

Geiler's family sued the hospitals and the physicians who managed her care. The case, Amy Geiler v. Sunrise Mountain View Hospital, went to trial in Clark County District Court before Judge Veronica Barisich in January 2023. Sean Claggett of Claggett & Sykes tried it over about four weeks and later called it the hardest case of his career. Several defendants, including Mountain's Edge Hospital and one of the treating doctors, settled before the jury reached a verdict.

At trial the firm walked the jury through the lab values: how far the sodium had fallen, how fast it was pushed back up, and why accepted practice calls for a slow, measured correction. The defense argued that the physicians met the standard of care. On February 7, 2023, the jury returned just under $47 million. It assigned about $1.4 million for past medical bills, roughly $10 million for future medical care, and $35 million for pain and suffering.

The jury placed 35 percent of the fault on Dr. Amit Valera, the admitting physician at Mountain's Edge Hospital. It found Dr. Ejo John and MountainView Hospital negligent but not a legal cause of the injury. Because most of the liability fell on parties who had already settled, Geiler could collect only the share tied to the defendant found responsible at trial.

Nevada caps noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases at $350,000, a limit voters approved in 2004. That cap cut the $35 million pain-and-suffering award down to $350,000. "This is the worst injury known in medicine, and it's worth $350,000," Claggett said of the result. After the cap and the apportionment of fault, the amount Geiler could actually recover was a fraction of the figure the jury put on her losses.