$40 Million Settlement for Child Left with Catastrophic Brain Injury After PICC-Line Procedure at Highland Park Hospital

In October 2016, the parents of a 12-year-old girl brought her to the emergency room at Highland Park Hospital, part of NorthShore University Health System, after she fell ill with what appeared to be strep throat and mononucleosis. Beneath those diagnoses lay a deeper and more dangerous problem: an abscess lodged deep in her throat was driving the infection.

Over the five days that followed, her condition declined visibly. She could no longer eat or take oral medication. Her heart rate and breathing remained abnormally fast, and her blood-oxygen levels stayed low. The warning signs called for escalating intervention, including a neck CT scan, consultation with a pediatric intensive care unit, and transfer to a children's hospital equipped to manage the underlying abscess. None of those steps were taken.

On October 22, hospital staff sedated her with Dilaudid and Benadryl and inserted a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC line) to deliver the nutrition she could no longer take by mouth. After the line was placed, staff positioned her flat on her back despite her ongoing respiratory distress. Within minutes she stopped breathing. Cardiac arrest followed. Resuscitation took approximately three to six minutes and required the creation of an emergency airway.

By the time her heart was restarted, the hypoxic injury to her brain was irreversible. She was left with catastrophic neurological damage that requires full-time professional nursing care around the clock.

Joseph A. Power Jr. and Joseph W. Balesteri of Power Rogers argued that a timely CT scan of the neck would have revealed the abscess and that the appropriate consultations would have triggered a transfer before her condition became unsurvivable without lasting harm. Cook County Associate Judge Allen Price Walker dismissed and authorized the settlement on June 27, 2018. The Lake County Circuit Court Probate Division then separately approved the settlement.

The $40 million figure represents, according to John L. Kirkton, editor of the Jury Verdict Reporter, the largest settlement ever reported in Cook County for a brain-damage case involving a minor. The funds allow the family to provide the full-time nursing care their daughter requires at home.