$120 Million Verdict for Woman Left Brain-Damaged After Three NYC Hospitals Missed Her Stevens-Johnson Syndrome

In February 2004, Jacqueline Martin, then 45, was taken to Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx after suffering a seizure. Doctors prescribed anti-seizure medication and sent her home. Within days she was back, then transferred to Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, and later to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center. Across those three admissions, spanning less than a month, something was going wrong that no one at any facility caught in time.

Martin had developed a severe allergic reaction to her seizure medication. The reaction caused swelling in her face, eyes, and throat, the classic warning signs of Stevens-Johnson Syndrome (SJS), a rare and life-threatening disorder in which the skin and mucous membranes break down. At each hospital, staff failed to recognize what they were seeing. No one stopped the medication causing the reaction, and no one initiated the aggressive treatment SJS demands. Martin went into cardiac arrest and was left with permanent, severe brain damage. She now requires around-the-clock care.

Thomas Moore of Kramer Dillof Livingston and Moore tried the case in New York Supreme Court, Bronx County. The trial focused on what Moore argued was a cascade of failures across all three facilities: medical personnel mismanaged Martin's medications, failed to respond promptly when her condition deteriorated, and did not provide the treatments her condition required. The core allegation was that any competent clinician, at any one of those three hospitals, should have recognized SJS and changed course before the cardiac arrest occurred.

The jury agreed. On May 25, 2012, it returned a verdict of $120 million, assigning 50 percent of the liability to Jacobi Medical Center, 40 percent to Kings County Hospital Center, 5 percent to Brookdale, and 4 percent to a neurologist involved in her care. The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation announced plans to appeal, calling the award inconsistent with the facts and the law. At the time of reporting, no appellate reduction had been confirmed. Legal trade and news coverage described the award as one of the largest medical malpractice verdicts ever returned in New York State.