A state jury awarded a former Waipahu couple and the couple’s 9-year-old brain-damaged daughter $12.1 million Friday in the family’s medical malpractice claim against Kapiolani Medical Center for Women & Children and the doctor who delivered the child in 2004.
Danica Jade Balleras was born at Kapiolani on June 4, 2004, severely brain-damaged and with cerebral palsy.
The family’s lawyer, Stuart Kodish, said her condition and injuries were due to the errors and negligence committed by the nurses at the hospital and Dr. Emma Avilla.
Kodish said Danica’s mother, Marjorie Balleras, was given drugs to induce labor. That caused strong contractions, which pressed on Danica’s umbilical cord and cut off oxygen to her brain.
Kodish said Danica went into cardiac arrest, and it took the nurses and doctor 26 minutes to deliver the child. By then the lack of oxygen had caused permanent brain damage.
Danica has required around-the-clock care ever since. Kodish said she can’t talk or move her arms and legs and is confined to a special wheelchair. Danica also cannot eat and has to be fed through a tube connected to her gastrointestinal system.
The Ballerases sued Kapiolani and Avilla in 2007.
Jury selection and trial started last month. Friday’s verdict came after two days of deliberation.
The jurors found Kapiolani 65 percent responsible for Danica’s injuries and Avilla 35 percent responsible.
"My clients are very grateful," Kodish said.
He said the money awarded the Ballerases will help the family pay for bills due from Danica’s past care and for her future care.
Shortly after Danica’s birth, her father, Olledan Balleras, who was in the Hawaii Army National Guard, was deployed to Iraq for a year, Kodish said. Balleras continued on active duty after his Iraq tour for further training and was later offered a job as an instructor at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center in Monterey, Calif. Kodish said Balleras had to decline the job and put his career on hold to care for his daughter. The family now lives in Salinas, Calif.
Kenneth Robbins, one of the lawyers for Kapiolani, said the hospital and its counsel are evaluating post-trial legal action and an appeal.
"In our view and in the opinions of the foremost physicians in this country in this area of medicine, the weight of the evidence does not support this verdict," Robbins said.
The lawyers for Avilla declined comment.
In 2010 a former Navy family received an $11 million settlement after Kayla Mae McCraw suffered permanent brain damage when she was delivered by young, inexperienced Tripler Army Medical Center doctors.
That followed a $16.5 million verdict against the federal government and Tripler in 2006 over the delivery of Izzy Peterson, who was given carbon dioxide instead of oxygen to help him breathe, resulting in severe brain damage.
