Cleveland Clinic Patient Paralyzed After Surgery Wins $7.6 Million: What the Verdict Teaches About Ohio Damages

Published July 5, 2023 · Verdicts & Settlements

A woman goes into surgery for back pain and wakes up unable to feel anything below the middle of her chest. She never walks again. Last month a Cuyahoga County jury decided the Cleveland Clinic should answer for that, and its verdict is a useful lesson in how Ohio juries put a value on a life-altering injury.

What happened, as reported

According to the Cleveland Jewish News, Laurie Hance of Gates Mills saw a Cleveland Clinic neurosurgeon for back pain in 2018. On October 3, 2018, she underwent surgery to place a shunt that would redirect spinal fluid. Afterward she reported severe pain and a loss of sensation from the middle of her chest down. She never walked again.

Her lawyers told the jury that an order in her chart prevented an MRI and that she remained paralyzed until a second operation on February 15, 2019. They contended that something compressing her spine was removed during that second surgery. The second surgery, the article reports, left her in worse pain.

After a two-week trial before Judge Emily Hagan, the jury returned its verdict on June 6, 2023:

• $3 million in economic damages to Ms. Hance;
• $3,625,000 for her pain and suffering; and
• $1 million to her husband, Bill Hance, for loss of consortium.

The jury rejected the claim for punitive damages. In a statement, the Clinic said it disagreed with the outcome and was evaluating its options. It also noted that the jury did not accept the theory that a foreign object had been left in and later removed without consent. As with any fresh verdict, post-trial motions or an appeal may follow; the verdict is not final, and we have no involvement in the case.

Three kinds of damages, three different stories

What makes this verdict instructive is the way the jury divided it. Each line answers a different question.

Economic damages: the losses with a receipt

Economic damages are the losses you can document with a bill, a pay stub or an expert's projection: past and future medical care, rehabilitation, home and vehicle modifications, attendant care, and lost earnings. For someone paralyzed from the chest down, the future is where most of this money lives: wheelchairs and their replacements, accessible housing, skin and bladder care, therapy, and help with daily tasks for decades.

Ohio does not cap economic damages. That is why the work of building a life-care plan and documenting every expense is the foundation of a catastrophic-injury case. We explain the categories in What Your Case Is Worth.

Noneconomic damages: what the injury took from her life

The $3,625,000 for pain and suffering is the jury's measure of the human loss: the pain, the loss of independence, the end of the activities that made up a life. No receipt proves it. It is proven through testimony from the injured person, family, friends and treating providers about who she was before and who she is now.

Loss of consortium: the spouse's own claim

The $1 million award to Bill Hance is a reminder that a catastrophic injury happens to a marriage, not only to a patient. Loss of consortium compensates a spouse for the loss of companionship, care, help around the home and the ordinary partnership of married life. It is a separate claim belonging to the spouse, and it is easy to overlook when everyone is focused on the patient.

How Ohio's medical-claim limits work

Ohio has two different statutes limiting noneconomic damages. The general cap in R.C. 2315.18 covers most injury cases, but it does not govern medical-malpractice claims. Those fall under a separate statute, R.C. 2323.43.

Under R.C. 2323.43(A)(2), noneconomic damages in a medical claim generally may not exceed the greater of $250,000 or three times the plaintiff's economic loss, up to $350,000 per plaintiff or $500,000 per occurrence. Division (A)(3) raises the limit to $500,000 per plaintiff, or $1 million per occurrence, when the injury involves:

• permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, or loss of a bodily organ system; or
• permanent physical functional injury that permanently prevents the person from independently caring for self and performing life-sustaining activities.

Two things are worth understanding. First, unlike the general tort statute, which removes the cap entirely for the most catastrophic injuries, the medical statute only raises it. Second, the jury is not told about these limits; it decides the full value of the harm, and the court addresses the statute afterward. The published reports of this verdict do not say how the limits will be handled here, and we will not guess.

What the verdict does show is that the evidence needed to qualify for the higher limit, proof that an injury is permanent and has taken away the use of the body or the ability to live independently, is the same evidence that persuades a jury. I wrote about building that proof in Permanent Injury and the "Catastrophic" Exception.

The caps are also not beyond challenge. In January we discussed Brandt v. Pompa, 2022-Ohio-4525, in which the Supreme Court of Ohio held the general cap unconstitutional as applied to a child victim of criminal sexual abuse whose $20 million award had been cut to $250,000. That ruling was narrow and dealt with the general cap, not the medical one, but it shows the courts will look hard at caps that leave a devastated person with a token recovery. Our post on what Brandt v. Pompa means for injury victims explains the decision.

Why no punitive damages?

Punitive damages punish rather than compensate, and Ohio requires a high level of proof before a jury may award them. A verdict that awards full compensation but declines punishment is common and is not a loss. The jury here found the harm real and valued it in the millions; it simply did not find the conduct warranted punishment on top of that.

What this means for you

If you or someone in your family suffered a serious complication after surgery, a few lessons from this case apply:

• Get the records early. Operative notes, nursing charts, imaging orders and billing records can tell different stories. Here, the plaintiffs' lawyer pointed to a bill for removing an object that the operative notes did not describe.
• Count the spouse's loss. A consortium claim is real money and should be part of the case from the start.
• Build the future. In a paralysis or brain-injury case, the life-care plan and economic testimony drive both the economic award and the argument for the higher noneconomic limit.
• Watch the clock. Medical claims in Ohio carry a shorter filing deadline than most injury cases. Our guide to deadlines and the timeline of an Ohio injury case explains it.

Large hospital systems have experienced defense lawyers and deep resources. They also answer to juries, as this case shows. Our personal injury practice handles serious-injury claims throughout the Miami Valley.