Summerlin Hospital Settles Confidentially as Jury Weighs $63 Million Brain Injury Claim

Elisa Sales went to Summerlin Hospital and Medical Center in Las Vegas for what was supposed to be a routine outpatient procedure to replace her pacemaker. She was sedated for the operation. She left the hospital with a permanent brain injury that changed the rest of her life.

Her attorneys laid out a chain of failures. The monitors tracking her heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen had their audible alarms switched off, which violated hospital policy. After she was given too much sedative, her blood pressure dropped to dangerous levels. Sedation can lower blood pressure on its own, but with the alarms silent, the staff did not catch the crisis in time. Resuscitation was delayed, and her brain went too long without enough oxygen.

The loss of blood flow caused a hypoxic brain injury. Her lawyers told the jury that Sales now functions at roughly the level of a five-year-old and depends on others for her daily care. Her husband joined the case as a co-plaintiff over the harm to their life together.

Sean Claggett of Claggett & Sykes represented the couple. The case was tried in the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County (Case No. A-17-758060-C) over roughly 15 days in October 2019, with testimony from 18 fact witnesses and 13 expert witnesses. Claggett argued that the medical team failed to act quickly enough as Sales went into respiratory arrest, and that silencing the monitor alarms set the harm in motion. The hospital, represented by Michael Prangle of Hall Prangle & Schoonveld, countered that its resuscitation efforts met the standard of care and that her neurological problems came from pre-existing medical conditions.

In his closing argument on October 24, Claggett asked the jurors to award Sales and her husband up to $63 million.

The jury never returned that number, or any number. While the panel was deliberating, Summerlin Hospital and Sales reached a confidential settlement, and the dollar figure was never made public. The trial had run from October 2 to October 28, 2019.