Lee County Jury Returns Record $9 Million Verdict in Auburn Student's Pulmonary Embolism Death

Hope Johnson was a 20-year-old student at Auburn University. In 2014 a blood test flagged that she carried a Factor V Leiden mutation, a genetic trait that sharply raises the risk of dangerous blood clots. The result was recorded as normal. Johnson was told she was fine, and she was prescribed hormonal birth control, a medication that itself raises clotting risk.

About a month later she fell ill and went to Auburn Urgent Care. A physician there diagnosed bronchitis and sent her home with an antibiotic. Two days later she returned with sharp chest pain. The doctor who treated her that day was working his first shift at the clinic and could not access its electronic records. He gave her an inhaler and sent her home rather than to a hospital. Johnson died the next day of a massive pulmonary embolism, the clots having moved into her lungs.

Cory Watson Attorneys Leila Watson and Nina Towle Herring, working with Brett Turnbull of the Turnbull Law Firm, brought a wrongful death claim for Johnson's family. The lawsuit, Estate of Hope Johnson v. Auburn Urgent Care, was tried in Lee County Circuit Court in Opelika.

At trial the attorneys showed that Johnson's clotting risk was documented well before her final visits. They argued that her chest pain, combined with her history and her birth control prescription, pointed to a clot, and that the urgent care providers treated her for a routine respiratory illness instead of looking for the condition that was killing her.

About a week before trial, the obstetrician who had prescribed the birth control and his practice, Lee Obstetrics and Gynecology, settled the claims against them for a confidential amount. That left Auburn Urgent Care as the remaining defendant when the case reached the jury.

On October 11, 2019, the Lee County jury returned a verdict of $9 million against the Auburn Urgent Care defendants, the largest award in a medical malpractice case in the county's history. The trial court later granted the defense's request for a remittitur and reduced the judgment to $6.5 million. The defendants appealed, and in 2021 the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the $6.5 million judgment in Bednarski v. Johnson.