“A San Francisco jury has awarded a 9-year-old boy $70.9 million in compensatory damages after finding a hospital and a medical clinic negligent for failing to diagnose his metabolic disease.” The mother of Michael Cook sued Stanford Health Services and the Palo Alto Medical Clinic, saying “that the hospital took Cook’s blood specimen when he was 4 hours old, too early to get accurate results when performing a required screening test for metabolic disorders.” Not until years later was Cook diagnosed with hereditary phenylketonuria, by which time he had suffered brain damage. “The lawyer defending Stanford Health Services, David Sheuerman, of Sheuerman, Martini & Tabari in San Jose, argued that the state didn’t come out with a guideline saying the tests should be done after a baby’s first 12 hours until 1995, the year after Cook was born. Sheuerman said 88,000 infants in California between zero and 12 hours of age were tested in 1994. ‘Stanford did their screening program the same way every other hospital in the (San Francisco) Bay Area did it.'” (Pam Smith, “San Francisco Jury Awards Boy $70.9M”, The Recorder, Sept. 30; Barbara Feder Ostrow, “$70 million awarded for boy’s brain damage”, San Jose Mercury-News, Sept. 30; Bob Egelko, “Brain-damaged boy wins huge verdict”, San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 30).

Filed under: Bay Area, hospitals, medical