A Routine Pain Injection, Permanent Paralysis, and a Record $60 Million Nassau Verdict

On November 18, 2019, a Valley Stream man in his sixties went to the Pain Institute of Long Island for what was meant to be a routine outpatient procedure: a lumbar epidural steroid injection, a common interventional pain treatment in which medication is delivered near the spinal nerves to relieve chronic back and leg pain. An electrical mechanic by trade and the primary provider for his family, he expected to be home the same day and back to ordinary life.

Instead, within minutes of waking from sedation he could not move or feel his legs. He had suffered a massive infarction of the spinal cord, an interruption of its blood supply that destroyed tissue and left him permanently paraplegic. The injury also brought neurogenic bowel and bladder dysfunction and chronic neuropathic pain, turning a procedure intended to relieve pain into a catastrophic, irreversible disability.

Gair Gair Conason brought the case to trial in Nassau County Supreme Court, with partner Marijo C. Adimey serving as lead trial counsel, second-chaired by associate Aaron M. Ser. Over roughly three weeks, the firm set out to show that the paralysis was not an unavoidable complication but the result of a departure from accepted medical care.

Central to the plaintiff's case was the medication itself. The evidence indicated that a particulate steroid had been administered: a drug not recommended for this use, and known to cause spinal-cord infarction if it reaches an artery feeding the cord. Findings from a spinal angiogram performed after the injury were inconsistent with the medication recorded in the treating physician's notes. The plaintiff's team argued that this error, rather than the procedure itself, cut off the blood supply to the spinal cord.

The jury was persuaded quickly. After the three-week trial, deliberations lasted less than three hours before the panel returned a unanimous verdict of $60,033,041 for the plaintiff and his wife. The award compensated him for past and future medical expenses, lost income, and pain and suffering, and his wife for the loss of his services and companionship.

The result is believed to be the largest medical-malpractice verdict in Nassau County history, and it ranked among the top medical-malpractice verdicts in the United States in 2025. It came in a case where a routine, elective procedure ended in lifelong paralysis.