$24.1 Million Verdict -- Largest in Seminole County History -- for Infant Left with Cerebral Palsy After Uterine Rupture During Delivery
Won by Leesfield & Partners.
A Seminole County jury awarded $24.1 million -- the largest verdict in county history at the time -- after an obstetrician's prolonged vacuum extraction and use of fundal pressure caused a uterine rupture that deprived a newborn girl of oxygen and left her with severe cerebral palsy.
What happened
When labor stalled, the delivering obstetrician, Dr. Michael Geiling, turned to a vacuum extractor. He applied it for more than 45 minutes. He then directed nurses to press down hard on the mother's abdomen -- a technique known as fundal pressure -- to push the baby toward the birth canal. The pressure ruptured the uterus.
The rupture severed the blood supply to the baby. Oxygen deprivation during the minutes that followed caused the child, identified in coverage as Raven, to be born with severe cerebral palsy. The injury was permanent and would require lifelong care.
The family retained Leesfield and Partners, whose attorneys built the case around the sequence of clinical decisions: the prolonged vacuum attempt, the decision to add fundal pressure, and the failure to recognize and respond to warning signs before rupture occurred. The three-week trial in Seminole County put those choices directly before the jury.
In 2005, the jury returned a verdict of $24,100,000 for the Shoaf family, a result the firm's account describes as the largest in Seminole County history at the time.
The verdict did not survive post-trial motions. The trial court granted the defense a new trial, and the Shoaf family appealed that order. On June 1, 2007, the Florida Fifth District Court of Appeal affirmed the new-trial order, holding that the trial judge had not abused his discretion (Shoaf v. Geiling, 960 So. 2d 41, Fla. 5th DCA 2007). The appellate court agreed that it was error for the plaintiffs' attorney to play portions of videotaped deposition testimony during closing argument when those recordings had not been admitted into evidence in that form at trial. The court record confirms the firm as trial counsel for the Shoafs: John Elliott Leighton, Patricia M. Kennedy and Mark A. Sylvester of Leesfield, Leighton and Partners of Miami, with co-counsel, appeared for the family before the Fifth District.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.