PUBLISHERS NOTE: Some free advice from The Charles Smith Blog to All Children's co-lead counsel Ethan Shapiro, who is quoted as saying that the hospital "still plans to appeal the court's decision 'for as long as necessary.'" Dear Mr. Shapiro: I feel compelled to remind you that you lost. You were walloped in court. Decimated. Your client was exposed as the last hospital I would ever want to take a child too. (I can't understand why you didn't abandon ship this sinking long ago!) Just tell your client to forgo this ill-advised appeal (of which only the lawyers can win) - and tell your client to spend the funds it will save on 'all the children', (it's called patient care), on publicly and unflinchingly probing where it went wrong - and on finding its terribly lost soul. Best wishes.
STORY: "Judge lowers award against All Children’s but dismisses call for new trial," by Health and Medicine Reporter Reporter Christopher O'Donnell, published by The Tampa Bay Times, on January 17, 2024.
PHOTO-CAPTION: "Sarasota County Judge Hunter Carroll this week reduced the damages awarded against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital in the case made famous by the "Take Care of Maya" Netflix documentary. The judge's order included sharp criticism of the hospital's defense of its care of Maya Kowalski."
GIST: A Sarasota County judge has lowered the damages awarded by a jury against Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital by $47.5 million but dismissed the hospital’s calls for a new trial.
In an order released Tuesday, Judge Hunter Carroll agreed with the hospital’s motion that some of the jury’s awards to Maya Kowalski and her family were “excessive.”
But he defended the majority of the decisions reached by a six-person jury that in November found that All Children’s in 2016 falsely imprisoned and battered Maya Kowalski, a 10-year-old Sarasota County girl, inflicted emotional distress on her and her family and contributed to her mother’s suicide.
The case gained international attention, partly because it had been popularized in a Netflix documentary.
The judge’s order means the hospital must still pay the Venice family $213.5 million.
“Despite the picture painted by (All Children’s) motion, this jury did not go off the rails,” Carroll wrote in his order.
Attorneys for All Children’s filed several motions after the trial, some arguing that there were grounds for a new trial.
The motions included claims of juror misconduct and that hospital attorneys were not granted sufficient time to make the defense’s case.
They also argued that the hospital was entitled to more protection from litigation since it was acting on behalf of the state, which had ordered 10-year-old Maya be sheltered at the hospital while suspicions of medical child abuse by her mother, Beata Kowalski, were investigated.
In his order, Carroll, who presided over the eight-week trial, was highly critical of the St. Petersburg hospital’s defense of its actions during a three-month period when the hospital cared for Maya.
The hospital initially blocked the family from leaving the hospital with their child. Damages were also awarded for the hospital’s decision to place the then-10-year-old girl in a room equipped with video surveillance for 48 hours and to strip her down to her shorts and training bra and photograph her without permission from her parents or a court.
A hospital social worker sometimes kissed and hugged the girl and had her sit on her lap.
“The overarching theme of the (hospital’s) motion is it did nothing wrong, and its actions were rather ordinary,” Carroll wrote. “Having sat through the entire trial, the Court rhetorically wonders what (All Children’s) definition would be of an extraordinary action.”
Despite Tuesday’s ruling, Ethen Shapiro, co-lead counsel for All Children’s, said the hospital still plans to appeal the court’s decision “for as long as necessary.”
In a statement released Wednesday, he said the court had failed to “grasp the complex medical, child safety, and legal issues in this case.”
“Any fair and unbiased review of the facts and the law in this case completely vindicates the care provided by the experts at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital,” Shapiro said in the statement. “It is a sad indictment of the judicial process in this case that those facts were concealed and that the law was misrepresented to the jury.”
Carroll earlier this month conducted an interview of juror Paul Lengyel before also dismissing a motion filed by hospital attorneys alleging that Lengyel shared information about the trial with his wife, who then posted about the trial on social media.
In Tuesday’s ruling, he did agree with hospital attorneys that a $50 million award to Maya’s father, Jack Kowalski, for noneconomic damages arising from the death of his wife was “excessive” and ordered the amount be lowered to $24 million.
He also reduced economic damages for family members by $16.5 million and overturned an award of $5 million for fraudulent medical billing.
The order gives the Kowalski family 15 days to reject the revised damages award and elect for a new trial that would be limited to the claims of damages that Carroll reduced.
The entire story can be read at:
| PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog; |
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
