A FAMILY has been awarded nearly $1BILLION after a botched hospital birth left their baby girl permanently disabled.
A Utah judge handed down the whopping $951million verdict after finding catastrophic failures at Jordan Valley Medical Center West Valley Campus.
Mum Anyssa Zancanella and her family received nine hundred and fifty-one million dollars for a botched hospital birth[/caption]
Azaylee, pictured with her sibling, mum Anyssa, and dad Daniel[/caption]
What should have been a safe delivery ended in disaster, with the judge saying the mum would have been better off “delivering her baby at the bathroom of a gas station”.
Anyssa Zancanella, of Wyoming, sued the hospital after her first pregnancy – described as uneventful and healthy until labor – ended in devastation in October 2019.
Zancanella’s water broke while she was visiting the Salt Lake City area.
Hours away from her own doctor, she and her partner, Daniel McMichael, rushed to West Valley Hospital, which was then operated by Steward Health Care.
Instead of a safe delivery, her lawsuit claimed nurses gave her “excessive” doses of the labor-inducing drug Pitocin and ignored signs of distress.
The filing noted that “this was the very first, or one of the very first times, that either of the assigned bedside nurses had individually been assigned a laboring patient.”
According to the mum, doctors waited more than a day before performing a C-section, by which time baby Azaylee had been starved of oxygen and suffered catastrophic brain damage.
“[The obstetrician] abandoned mother and fetus/infant when she was fully aware of significant and dangerous issues with the ongoing labor process and the ongoing health and well-being of the fetus,” the lawsuit stated.
Now four years old, little Azaylee is nonverbal, suffers seizures, and requires round-the-clock care.
She shares a bed with her parents because she cannot sleep alone and undergoes ongoing physical and occupational therapy.
“[Azaylee] had her life stolen. We all did,” Zancanella told the court.
“We had her taken from us. She is trapped. I know that my daughter is in there, but she can’t come out and I think of that every day.”
Third District Judge Patrick Corum blasted Steward Health Care in his ruling.
He said: “[Zancanella] would have been better off delivering this baby at the bathroom of a gas station, or in a hut somewhere in Africa, than in this hospital.
“Literally, this was the most dangerous place on the planet for her to have given birth.
“The person she was to be, the person she deserved to be, is trapped inside a brain-damaged child.
I know that my daughter is in there, but she can’t come out and I think of that every day
Anyssa Zancanella
“I cannot think of anything more profound, total or complete than that loss.”
Corum awarded Zancanella, McMichael, and Azaylee $951million – noting that the figure could have been even higher if Steward had engaged in the case.
“Had the defendant been here, I think the testimony would have been lengthier and even more compelling, if that’s possible,” the judge said.
But collecting the massive payout remains uncertain.
Steward, once the US’s largest private hospital operators, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 and sold off all of its hospitals.
It also withdrew from the case, leaving its lawyers to quit and its defense abandoned.
“Indeed, since at least the early Spring of 2024, Defendants’ entire strategy seems to have been nothing other than an attempt to thwart justice and the judicial process,” Corum said, adding that he was “reluctant to give what I think this case is actually worth because [the defendants are] not here.”
The family‘s attorney, Jennifer Morales, said they expect to collect at least half of the award, which represents punitive damages.
Little Azaylee is nonverbal, suffers seizures, and requires round-the-clock care[/caption]
Anyssa told the court of how her daughter ‘had her life stolen’[/caption]
