Baltimore Jury Returns $55 Million Verdict After Johns Hopkins Delayed Emergency C-Section for More Than Two Hours

On March 25, 2010, Rebecca Fielding went into labor at her home with the assistance of a nurse midwife. After hours of labor, the delivery was not progressing safely and Fielding was transported by ambulance to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. What followed at the hospital became the center of a landmark malpractice case: medical staff waited more than two hours before performing an emergency cesarean section, despite signs that the infant was being deprived of oxygen.

Enzo Martinez was born with severe and permanent global developmental delays, brain damage, cerebral palsy, and intellectual disability. He cannot walk, speak, or sit independently. His parents, Enso Martinez and Rebecca Fielding, brought suit against Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Health System, alleging that physicians deviated from the standard of care by failing to perform the cesarean section in time to prevent the oxygen deprivation that caused their son's injuries.

After a two-week trial before a Baltimore City Circuit Court jury, plaintiff's experts testified that delivery should have been completed by 4:15 a.m. but did not occur until 5:40 a.m. That gap, they argued, directly caused the neurological catastrophe Enzo suffered. The family was represented at trial by the Baltimore firm then known as Wais, Vogelstein, Bedigian and Arfaa, with Gary Wais serving as lead trial counsel. H. Briggs Bedigian was a named partner of that firm and part of the trial team; he later co-founded Gilman and Bedigian, LLC. The defense maintained that the care provided met applicable standards.

On June 26, 2012, the jury returned a verdict of $55 million: $4 million for future lost wages, $25 million for future medical expenses and life care, and $26 million in non-economic damages. Applying Maryland's statutory cap on non-economic damages, the trial court reduced the judgment to approximately $28.3 million. The verdict was reported as the largest medical malpractice award in Maryland history at the time.

Johns Hopkins appealed, and on July 3, 2013, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial. The court found the trial judge had committed reversible error by barring Hopkins from presenting evidence of the nurse midwife's conduct before the hospital admission. Because the midwife was uninsured and not a party, the trial court had excluded her care from the jury's consideration. The appellate court held that this created an unfair gap in the record: the plaintiffs were permitted to argue the pre-hospital care was appropriate while the hospital could not dispute it. The case was remanded for retrial.