$7.75 Million Verdict After Presbyterian ICU Staff Left Patient Immobile, Causing Stage 4 Pressure Ulcer

In December 2011, Michael Webb, then 44 years old, underwent knee surgery at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque. Post-operative complications forced him into the intensive care unit, where he was unconscious and entirely dependent on nursing staff to move his body. Under Presbyterian's own written protocols, patients at risk for pressure injuries must be repositioned at least every two hours.

What followed was a systematic failure to follow that protocol. Within six days of his ICU admission, a wound had formed on Webb's sacrum, the bony base of his spine. Five days after that, a wound care specialist examined the site and found a full-thickness Stage 4 pressure ulcer, a category of injury in which tissue destruction reaches through the skin, into muscle, and potentially to bone. The injury required repeated debridement to remove infected and dead tissue. Five years after his hospitalization, the wound still had not fully healed.

Webb and his wife, Tammy Lee Bruyere, filed suit in 2012 in Bernalillo County District Court, case no. D-202-cv-2012-04942. The theory at trial was straightforward: Presbyterian knew its own repositioning rule, failed to follow it, and the failure directly caused Webb's injury. The hospital also knew, through internal documentation, that the patient was at elevated risk for skin breakdown, which made the lapse more egregious.

The jury heard roughly a week of testimony. Attorneys Randi McGinn and A. Elicia Montoya of what is now McGinn Montoya Love Curry and Sievers, P.A. presented evidence of both the hospital's negligence and the deliberate indifference that justified punitive damages. After about a day of deliberations, the jury found Presbyterian negligent and causally responsible.

The award totaled $7.75 million: $4 million in compensatory damages to Webb, $1.5 million to Bruyere for the full-time caregiving she had provided her husband, and $2.25 million in punitive damages shared by both plaintiffs. Presbyterian stated after the verdict that it was evaluating how to proceed, but no public record indicates the award was reduced or reversed. The New Mexico Court of Appeals addressed the case in an unpublished opinion issued January 21, 2021 (No. A-1-CA-37404).